Barwon Water’s Jai Vadhyaphal: Geelong’s fatberg slayer

Footage of a fatberg lodged in one of Geelong’s sewerage super highways reveals a grim site, so how does the town’s fatberg slayer remove it? SEE THE FOOTAGE

There’s a foul smell emanating from a pipe on Bellerine St.

The smell might catch the attention of the odd pedestrian, so too might the teams of hi-vis clad workers, but they are none the wiser as to the disgusting scene 30m beneath their feet.

A team from Barwon Water are working to remove a 2.5m fatberg, a congealed messy mass of non-flushable material which has formed in a sewerage super highway which flows beneath the CBD street.

Overseeing the operation is Jai Vadhyaphal.

ai Vadhyaphal is Geelong’s fatberg slayer. Picture: Alison Wynd

Mr Vadhyaphal is Barwon Water’s section leader network operations, he describes his job as ensuring water “gets from A to B,” something fatbergs get in the way of.

“It’s satisfying,” Mr Vadhyaphal said.

“At the end of the day we want the sewer to flow, and when that fatberg clears we are so happy, it’s so amazing.”

Mr Vadhyaphal and his team have been monitoring the water levels in the street’s pipes closely since April, when his crew worked to remove a 10m fatberg from the sewer.

“The people that were here when it cleared (in April) were so thrilled, we were fighting it for so long,” Mr Vadhyaphal said.

A team of Barwon Water employees work to remove a fatberg on Bellerine St Picture: Alison Wynd

While removing fatbergs is in his job description, Mr Vadhyaphal said he’d never battled anything like it before.

“It takes a lot to block a big pipe,” he said.

The process is and arduous one — a hose is sent 30m down a hole with a special metal head at the end.

The head lodges itself into the fatberg, squirting water from multiple holes which slowly break the mass down.

The only way to monitor the process is via water levels in the pipes, and with a grainy black and white camera, the footage from which wouldn’t look out of place in a horror flick.

One of the hose heads Barwon Water uses to break up fatbergs. Picture: Alison Wynd

Footage from below.

Roughly 30 per cent of Geelong’s sewage runs through the pipes under Bellerine St, making it an important one to keep clear.

A few streets over, a 6.8m-long interactive “fatberg” designed to encourage good flushing habits is the centrepiece of a Barwon Water pop-up exhibition this week.

The installation, created by The Indirect Object, allows people to add personalised messages to a replica “fatberg” located at Barwon Water’s “Pooseum of Modern (f)Art” at its Ryrie St headquarters.

Kids Yusuf Shah with Marlee and Nash Marsh checking out Geelong Design Week at Barwon Water including an art installation of a fatberg. Picture: Brad Fleet

Barwon Water general manager of smart and sustainable infrastructure David Snadden hopes the 10-day event, which wraps up on Saturday, will take the organisation’s Don’t Flush It campaign to the next level.

“When people flush items like wet wipes, tissues, or rubbish, it causes blockages that can lead to sewage spills in streets, our homes and to our creeks and rivers,” he said.

The Geelong Design Week exhibition launched last Thursday, the same day Mr Vadhyaphal and his team cleared the Bellerine St sewer.

Originally published as Barwon Water’s Jai Vadhyaphal: Geelong’s fatberg slayer