BALTIMORE (AP) — A “fatberg” that may have taken beyond half a century to grow below Baltimore has been removed.
News outlets report the city’s Public Works department used a camera, pressure washer and truck-mounted industrial vacuum to clear the mass of curdled grease, wet wipes and other waste. Workers resorted to the strategy Monday after they’d begun scraping pieces off last month.
The notorious glob was found clogging up to 85 percent of a 24-inch (61-centimeter) pipe near Penn Station. It’s blamed for causing more than 1 million gallons (3 million liters) of sewage to overflow into the Jones Fall stream. It’s the culmination of objects caked along a pipe’s walls that shouldn’t go down drains.
Pat Boyle with Public Works says, “We can’t treat our toilets like our trash cans.”