Gigantic Fat Clog Removed From London Sewers
LONDON (CBS SF) -- A smelly problem deep beneath the streets of London has been eliminated.
Work crews from the Thames Water department worked in cramped and gut-wrenching conditions 13 feet below an east London street for nearly nine weeks removeing a mass made from fats, oil and waste that had been nicknamed "fatberg" by the locals.
Experts are making good use of the broken up fatberg. It is being converted into 4-thousand gallons of biodiesel -- enough to power 350 buses for a day.
Crews used high-pressured jets and their hands to break up the 130-ton clog which measured 800 feet from end to end.
But they know their job is not completed. The fatberg will return.
Every year, workers clear up about 80,000 fatberg blockages in the London sewer system at a cost of over $1 million-a-month.