Britain’s biggest-ever “fatberg” — a 15-ton ball of congealed lard — was extracted from a London sewer after a 10-day operation following complaints from residents that their toilets were backing up.
The “fatberg” the size of a bus formed under a major road in Kingston, utility company Thames Water said Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reported.
“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,” Gordon Hailwood, waste contracts supervisor for the company, said in a statement.
“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.”
CountyClean Environmental Services, the waste management company that removed the fatberg, said it would be recycled.
“The water is extracted and the remaining fats and oils are turned into products like soap, biodiesel and fuel,” a CountyClean spokesman told AFP.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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