Fatbergs are costing Thames Water £1 million a month to clear – with Havering, Barking and Dagenham named by the water company as fatberg hotspots.
Fatbergs are wreaking havoc in Havering, Barking and Dagenham sewers. A total of 12,386 blockages have been cleared in Havering and 8,998 in Barking and Dagenham in the last five years, treble the amount found in the whole of Oxfordshire.
Formed when leftover cooking fat and wet wipes congeal into a solid mass in sewers, fatbergs – which cost the company £1 million a month to clear – block pipes and can cause sewage to back up into people’s homes and gardens.
In a bid to alleviate the problem, Thames Water has launched a widespread campaign urging its customers to ‘Bin it – don’t block it’ when it comes to anything other than toilet paper and human waste.
As part of the campaign, ‘fat traps’ will be freely available to encourage customers to throw used cooking fat in the bin rather than pouring it down the sink, and billboard and bus stop posters will be appearing across the boroughs.
Thames Water’s head of customer field services, Jerry White, said:
“Havering and Barking and Dagenham are boroughs where we see some of the highest levels of ‘sewer abuse’ with people putting the wrong things down the sewer. Having sewage flood your property or business as a result of a blockage is hugely distressing and, in many cases, avoidable."
"We hope this major information campaign will educate people and encourage them to ‘Bin it – don’t block it’, enabling sewers to do the job they were designed to do. To have so many sewer blockages in one borough is unacceptable.”
Thames Water’s sewer operations manager for Havering and Barking, Jon Wright, said that his team spend hours every day removing the blockages which increase wear and tear on the pipes. He added that the more fatbergs there are the more damage they cause, which inevitably results in having to dig up roads to fix broken sewers – all of which causes disruption to customers and ultimately makes an impact on customer bills.
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