Thames Water, the United Kingdom’s largest water and wastewater services company, has begun a two-week project to scrape 1,000 tons of fat from London’s sewer passages. That much fat is enough to fill nine double-decker buses, if you must know.

Apparently, the sewers underneath London’s Leicester Square has been heavily deposited with hardened, putrid fat over the years, due to what Thames Water calls “sewer abuse” – when stuff other than water, human waste and toilet paper is flushed down into the sewers. The operation is being tagged as the largest sewer clean-up of its kind.

The operation, which began early Tuesday morning, is ran by a team of “flushers”, armed with shovels and water jet streams to break down the fat walls.

“We couldn’t even access the sewer as it was blocked by a four-foot wall of solid fat,” says Danny Brackley, one of Thames Water’s sewer flushers. “We’re used to getting our hands dirty, but nothing on this scale.

[via The Independent]

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