15-tonne ‘fatberg’ removed from London sewer

A 15-tonne ball of congealed fat — dubbed Britain’s biggest ever “fatberg” — was removed from a London sewer after a 10-day operation following complaints from locals that their toilets would not flush.

The monstrous lump of festering food fat mixed with wet wipes — the size of a bus — formed in drains under a major road in Kingston, south-west London, utility firm Thames Water said.

Had it not been removed, the deposit could have led to sewage flooding homes, streets, and businesses in the leafy London suburb.

“While we’ve removed greater volumes of fat from under central London in the past, we’ve never seen a single, congealed lump of lard this big clogging our sewers before,” said Gordon Hailwood, waste contracts supervisor for the company.

“Given we’ve got the biggest sewers and this is the biggest ‘fatberg’ we’ve encountered, we reckon it has to be the biggest such berg in British history.

“The sewer was almost completely clogged with over 15 tonnes of fat. If we hadn’t discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston.

“It was so big it damaged the sewer and repairs will take up to six weeks.”

CCTV images from the sewer showed the mound of fat had reduced the 70cm x 48cm drain to 5% of its normal capacity.

CountyClean Environmental Services, which removed the deposit, said it would go to good use.

“We recycle everything that we remove — the water is extracted and the remaining fats and oils are turned into products like soap, biodiesel and fuel,” a spokesman said.

“We have a very specialised piece of equipment — called a Kroll recycler — that we can use from the road and allows us to remove the fat without any workmen having to descend into the sewers.”