Melbourne’s sewerage system clogged by fatberg, warns Yarra Valley Water

IT’S heeeeeere. You’ve seen the enormous mass of fat and waste floating under the streets of London, now one has been found Down Under.

MELBOURNE, it’s time to cut the fat.

That’s the message from Yarra Valley Water, which has released pictures depicting a fatberg of epic proportions in its sewerage system in a plea to residents to stop flushing food scraps and fat down the drain.

The CCTV pictures, released in February by the city’s largest water and sanitation business, show Melbourne’s swollen sewer system clogged with a fatberg, a congealed mass of fat, grease and waste.

RELATED: FATBERG THE SIZE OF A BOEING 747 DISCOVERED

RELATED: BUS-SIZED FATBERG BLOCKS SEWER

The beginning of a fatberg build up in Melbourne’s sewer system.

In Melbourne, fatbergs even grow outside.

The images are eerily similar to pictures of an epic Boeing 747-sized fatberg discovered in West London last week. Jammed underneath residents’ homes, the congealed mess was made up of waste fat, wet wipes, food, tennis balls and planks of wood, among other bits of debris.

It took workers at least four days to clean it up.

Foul blockage ... Photos shows the sewer blockage or fatberg that was the size of a Boeing 747.

“Fats, grease and oils are a real concern as they block up pipes, restricting the flow and ultimately the speed of service we can provide to our customers,” Yarra Valley Water infrastructure services general manager David Snadden said.

“Not to mention that the pressure caused by the blockage and build up can cause sewage spills and damage to our pipes.

“We all know where number ones and number twos should go, but there is no such thing as a number three, so please do not put anything else down the drain.

“We find all sorts of thing in our blocked pipes and some which even make it to our sewage treatment plants.”

Melbourne’s Brendan “The Drain Man” Dover said fat blockages were a regular occurrence, and he had seen fatbergs the size of four footballs in pipes. Australian fatbergs are typically triggered by fast food restaurants with faulty grease traps.

Water authorities say there are several safeguards in place to stop fatbergs of a London scale from happening here. Organisations such as Sydney Water keep tabs on how regularly restaurants empty their grease traps.

But generally there is the golden rule: Don’t flush it if it shouldn’t go down there.

The top offending items for fatberg build-up include plastics, paints, pesticides, fats, grease and oils, food scraps, condoms, nappy sand cotton buds.

— [e-mail]

Originally published as Melbourne’s sewerage system clogged by fatberg, warns Yarra Valley Water