Englanders' greasy fish and chips blamed for 64-meter-long fatberg
The fatberg is longer than 6 double-decker buses and will take 8 weeks to dissect.
BETH MOLE - 1/9/2019, 11:13 AM
The quiet coastal town of Sidmouth, England is known to be flush with tourists each summer. But it may now be known for another accumulating mass—one that isn’t flushable.
Authorities in Sidmouth have discovered a 64-meter-long hardened clump of grease, wet wipes, and sewage—an infamous fatberg—lurking and growing in a large sewer under the town’s waterfront. For perspective, at 64 meters, the length of the mass is greater than that of six double-decker buses end to end and the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“It is the largest discovered in our service history,” Andrew Roantree said in a statement. Roantree is the director of wastewater at South West Water, which manages the sewers in the town of about 13,000. He estimated that it will take “around eight weeks to dissect this monster in exceptionally challenging work conditions.” The team taking on the task will require “full breathing apparatus” and “special sewer jetting equipment," he said.
Of course, Sidmouth’s fatberg is not the largest ever found. In 2017, London authorities found a 250-meter-long fatberg weighing 130 metric tons in a Victorian sewer on the east side of the city. Curators at the Museum of London put chunks of it on exhibit last year as something of a “piece of 21st-century archeology.” The festering nuggets drew large crowds to the museum, and their decomposition was livestreamed from specially designed isolation boxes.
More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/englanders-greasy-fish-and-chips-blamed-for-64-meter-long-fatberg/
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