Valencia shifts kilometre-long 'fatberg' at cost of €2m
Thursday, November 23, 2017 @ 9:25 AM
VALENCIA has just spent €2 million on clearing a 'wipe-berg' – the city's own version of the UK's 'fatbergs' – from its drainage system and has launched a campaign urging residents not to put anything other than toilet paper down the lavatory.
Recent reports in the Spanish media showed that a kilometre-long blockage had appeared in Valencia's pipes, mostly made up of wet-wipes – the type used instead of toilet paper mainly, but also face-wipes and baby-wipes – plus other waste items that should not be flushed away, including cotton wool, cotton buds, dental floss, sanitary towels, tampons, and even condoms.
It came at around the same time as Thames Water in London reported a 'fatberg the size of a Boeing 747' having been found in the drainage system under Whitechapel, weighing 140 tonnes and measuring 250 metres, costing around €1.15m to shift with workers on the job seven days a week for – so far – two months.
The expression 'fatberg', first coined in 2013 and added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 2015, describes a huge, congealed deposit found in the pipes made up of similar items as those recently removed from Valencia's waterworks, but also greasy and fatty matter such as used cooking oil and food fat, and even used nappies, tennis balls and chunks of wood.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com