A ‘FATBERG’ the size of a double decker bus which weighed 15 tonnes has been removed from a drain under South West London.
The large lump of congealed food and other waste was causing a blockage that was resulting in local Kingston residents unable to properly flush toilets and it is thought that left alone it would have caused sewage flooding and possible severe damage to local homes and businesses.
Gordon Hailwood, waste contracts supervisor for Thames Water said: “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.
“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.”
Locals are now being urged to consider what they put down their drains, as repair work to the damaged pipe begins, costing thousands of pounds.
