Two “giant” fatbergs were removed last week from the sewers of St. Andrews, Scotland, reports the BBC. 20 tonnes (22 tons) of congealed grease, sewage and toilet paper had to be broken down, and Fife authorities embarked upon an educational campaign to get locals to stop pouring cooking fat down the drain.
Mike Will, waste water operations general manager at Scottish Water, said that businesses had collectively spent about £500,000 fitting new grease trapping equipment.Philip Soden, managing director of ECAS, added: “Most people simply didn’t realise their own actions could potentially lead to sewer flooding, causing irreparable damage to their own community.
A fatberg near Cincinatti caused an overflow, report local media, with “odor and discoloration” shutting down Winston Lake.
The overflow in Winton Woods was caused by a so-called fatberg, a large, solid blockage that forms inside a sewer system. This one was made of grease, wipes and other waste that wedged into spaces between tree roots, clogging the sewer. The fatberg was about 15 inches in diameter and 2 feet wide.
Valencia, Spain, became home to a fatberg that sent sewer workers on a nightmare operation compared by Valencia Plaza (English, ish) to the movie “Alien.”
It all started one day when they realized that “something was not working well,” says [Sanitation Engineer Jesus] Ceniceros. During the routine review mentioned they discovered that “there was a sewage relief to the old Turia channel” from this collector. It did not make sense, since these reliefs can only occur in case of heavy rains and that was not the case. They had to get close to see what was happening. The gymkhana started.
Like the navigators of the Nostromo in Alien, the first technicians came down convinced that they were going to find a minor enemy. Thus, Espinosa, of Acciona Agua València, explains that they believed that it was “an obstruction of a secondary collector”. They were wrong. “The problem was of a size … considerable” laughs Espinosa. And his smile is nervous, like that of war veterans.