Secrets of the Whitechapel fatberg
As the toxic mass that brought sewers to a standstill goes on display at the Museum of London. Nick Harding dares to take a peek
Were it not for the corner of a Cadbury Double Decker wrapper poking out from the deposit in the double-sealed acrylic case, it could well be a sample of moon rock. Closer inspection reveals a pockmarked concretion of materials; some organic, some man-made, much of indeterminate origin, parts suspiciously brown.
This is one of only two lumps left of the 820ft, 130-ton Whitechapel “fatberg” that brought the capital’s sewer system to a standstill in September, now entombed for posterity as part of the Museum of London’s City Now City Future installation. Apart from the army of Hazchem-suited workers who took two months to cleave the toxic mass from London’s bowels – and the conservationists at the museum, who made it safe for human viewing – I am the first person to lay eyes on it.
Within seconds, I witness the miracle of life: a tiny, freshly hatched drain fly stares up at me from its new home and flits swiftly around the surface. Who knows what other mysteries it may yet reveal.
London has faced down many threats: the Great Fire, the Black Death, the Blitz, Ken Livingstone. But last year, the city went to war with a foe from below; formed from the filth of 100,000 lavatory flushes, the subterranean beast weighed more than 11 double-decker buses and was longer than Tower Bridge.
The term “fatberg” first jumped into mainstream lexicon in August 2013; coined by Thames Water’s sewer “flushers” when a blockage the size of a bus ( just the one, that time) was discovered in a sewer in Kingstonupon-thames. In 2015, the word entered the Oxford English Dictionary: “a very large mass of solid waste in a sewerage system, consisting especially of congealed fat and personal hygiene products that have been flushed down toilets”.
The record-breaking Whitechapel fatberg was the largest ever discovered; its phenomenal growth in part of Bazalgette’s original brickbuilt labyrinth due to the number of takeaways and restaurants in the streets above, with the Royal London Hospital adding to the perfect storm of cess.
Growing unnoticed along the upper part of the tunnel, it was discovered by chance during a routine check, recalls Alex Saunders, a waste network manager for Thames Water – and architect of the behemoth’s eventual demise. By the time they found it, “it had plugged around 80per cent of the sewer”. Had its rapid growth not been halted, a tide of East End slurry would have risen through loos, drains and manhole covers, flooding Londoners in their own foul sludge.
The high-pressure water jets usually deployed to break down fatty deposits to be sucked into tankers proved useless against the Whitechapel monster. “It was like concrete,” recalls Saunders. “That’s when we had to send teams down with shovels to break away at it manually. The guys were in full kits; waders, overalls, breathing apparatus, hard hats, thick gloves. It was hot, difficult work.”
The heroic flushers worked in teams for 30-minute shifts before they had to come up and send another platoon into the gloom. Generators pumped fresh air so the workers didn’t inhale the poisonous stench. “Normally you can walk through sewers without breathing masks, but as soon as we started breaking up the fatberg it started to release gases like sulphur into the air, which was hazardous,” says Saunders.
In the process of extraction, the Whitechapel fatberg became a media sensation, going viral in more than 100 countries around the world and gaining its own segment on the BBC Two news satire show Mock the Week. Staff at the nearby Museum of London – midway through a season looking at the challenges of urban living in the 21st century – watched with interest.
“Our antennae twitched,” recounts Sharon Robinson-calver, the head of conservation and collection care at the museum, who was tasked with the challenge of literally polishing a turd for the Fatberg! exhibit that opens on Friday. “It is a really important London story,” she says. The museum deals with issues that affect Londoners, not just in the past but now as well. The fatberg story says a lot about population expansion, changing diets and the pressures being put on London’s Victorian infrastructure.”
As it was dismantled, workers discovered it had a surprising architecture of its own.
“It was made of the typical stuff that makes a fatberg: fats, oils and greases mixed in with lots of sanitary items, wet wipes and some medical waste,” says Saunders. “It looked like a slimy rock, but when you pulled it apart there was an internal stitching of wet wipes that held it all together. It was like concrete and we had to use a saw to open it up. We also found small blue pens from betting shops; there were a couple of bookies on the street above.”
Normally, smaller fatberg effluent is taken away for landfill, but the sheer volume of this specimen meant that it could be turned into enough biofuel to run a Routemaster bus for a year, at Thames Water’s new renewable energy plant in east London.
Currently the biggest user of renewable energy within the M25, the utility targets those who could be unwittingly feeding London’s fatbergs, using data collected from the city’s sewer network. Analysts can predict the streets most prone to fatbergs and are running an awareness campaign in those areas to educate people about how to dispose of waste – namely that “flushable wipes” are an absolute myth.
Robinson-calver’s team, who usually care for and preserve exhibits ranging from fine art to prehistoric archaeological material, had to work out what to do with their lumps, still gently seeping carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide.
“We had to analyse its chemical stability and structural integrity in order to understand what it was made of and how to handle it safely,” she says. “It was definitely one of the more unusual things I’ve had the pleasure of looking after.”
The lumps were treated as biohazards and left to air dry while samples were sent for analysis. In addition to faeces and fat, a living ecosystem of fly eggs and bacterial threats such as leptospirosis (Weil’s disease), E.coli and salmonella was discovered. When it was deemed stable enough, the exhibit was sent for X-ray to ensure there were no sharp surprises lurking inside, before being transferred to a quarantine unit in the museum.
“It became more stable as it dried,” Robinson-calver says. “When it first came up, our curator went to see it and said it smelled of rotten nappies. It is much less offensive now, it just has a bit of a toilet smell.”
By the time all risk assessments had cleared the samples for public display, the rest of the Whitechapel fatberg had been destroyed.
Thames Water legally gifted the remaining lumps to the museum and they were laid on a base of granulated charcoal and locked in an acrylic display case. Although no insurance value has yet been put on the remnants, the exhibit has already spawned a range of merchandise in the gift shop, including Fatberg Sludge fudge, and “Don’t Feed the Fatberg” T-shirts and tote bags.
Eerily, the two remaining samples continue to live and breathe: flies regularly hatch from the larger lump, while mould grows on the other.
“Some of the bacteria has died but the samples are still active,” says Robinson-calver, who admits a certain attachment to the curios. “They sustain life; it has been fascinating working with them.”
Their future remains uncertain. If popular, they could become part of the museum’s permanent collection. If not, the only certainty is that they will not be flushed back down the lavatory.
Fatberg! is at the Museum of London from Feb 9 to July 1. Visit museumoflondon.org.uk or call 020 7030 3300 for free tickets