Sewer in London’s East End Menaced by Giant Fatberg<br />It was discovered to the east of the city’s financial district, occupying a sixth of a mile of sewer under Whitechapel Road, between one of London’s largest mosques<br />and a pub called the Blind Beggar, where walking tours are taken to reminisce about a notorious gangland murder.<br />Joseph Bazalgette, who designed the Victorian network, probably did not account for the disposable diapers<br />and wipes that, in a matter of days, can mate with oil and grease to create fatbergs big enough to block tunnels that are six feet tall.<br />The sewer under Whitechapel Road is about four feet high<br />and less than three feet wide, and Thames Water engineers found the fatberg there during a routine check.<br />To prevent the contents of the sewer from flooding streets<br />and homes nearby, the utility is sending an eight-member team to break up the fatberg with high-powered jet hoses and hand tools.<br />The backbone of the network was built in the 19th century, after a series of cholera outbreaks<br />and the “Great Stink” of 1858, when lawmakers abandoned the Houses of Parliament because of the stench of raw sewage from the nearby River Thames.<br />That is 10 times the size of a similar mass that the company found beneath Kingston,<br />in South London, in 2013, and declared the biggest example in British history.<br />It has said that it clears three blockages from fat, and four or more caused by items like wipes, every hour<br />“It’s a total monster and taking a lot of manpower and machinery to remove,” said Thames Water’s head of waste networks, Matt Rimmer.
