Engineers from Thames Water have begun a three-week battle with a monster fatberg blocking a stretch of Victorian sewer beneath Whitechapel.

The 250 m behemoth is one of the largest ever found. The rock-solid mass of wet wipes, nappies, fat and oil weighs in at 130 tonnes – the same as 11 double decker buses – and is about 10 times the size of the infamous Kingston fatberg that was discovered in 2013. 

Work to remove the fatberg involves an eight-strong crew armed with high-powered jet hoses to break up the mass before sucking it out with tankers, which take it away for disposal at a recycling site in Stratford.

They are painstakingly removing on average of 20 to 30 tonnes per shift with work starting at 8am and continuing until 5pm seven days a week.

Thames Water’s head of waste networks, Matt Rimmer, said: “This fatberg is up there with the biggest we’ve ever seen. It’s a total monster and taking a lot of manpower and machinery to remove as it’s set hard.”

“It’s basically like trying to break up concrete. It’s frustrating as these situations are totally avoidable and caused by fat, oil and grease being washed down sinks and wipes flushed down the loo.

“We check our sewers routinely but these things can build up really quickly and cause big problems with flooding, as the waste gets blocked. It’s fortunate in this case that we’ve only had to close off a few parking bays to get to the sewer. Often, we have to shut roads entirely, which can cause widespread disruption – especially in London.”

CCTV camera inspections showed the 1200 mm high by 700 mm wide sewer to be totally blocked by the fatberg which is 3.5 m deep below ground for 250 m. Work will continue throughout September until the sewer is clear.

Australia is of course no stranger to fatbergs, as detailed in a previous intouch article.

The International Water Service Flushability Group (IWSFG) released its draft flushability standard for public comment earlier this year. With the request for comments now closed, the IWSFG will now meet to address the comments and amend the standard. The process to approve the final standard will be consistent with that used by International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).

The standard will be published as a Publicly Available Standard (PAS) later this year. To sign up to receive notification of the release of the standard, email: info@iwsfg.org.