A staggering 884 homes in Ealing have been flooded with raw sewage in just five years due to fatbergs, new figures have shown.
Congealed lumps of leftover cooking fat and wet wipes, dubbed fatbergs by Thames Water sewer staff, have blocked pipes and caused sewage to overflow into gardens and even inside homes.
The report comes as Thames Water, the company responsible for London’s sewers today, launched a widespread advertising campaign to raise awareness of the problem with customers in the worst sewer abuse boroughs.
The adverts on billboards and bus stops, urge customers to ‘bin it – don’t block it’ to prevent anyone else from suffering the misery of sewer flooding.
Over 8,000 fatbergs have been cleared in Ealing alone in just five years, in contrast to just 7,000 across the entire county of Oxfordshire.
Sewer operations manager for West London, Trevor Hennessey said: “Absolutely no one wants to have sewage overflowing into their home. It’s disgusting, distressing and completely avoidable.
“The sewers serve an important purpose - they are not an abyss for household rubbish. They were only designed to carry water, toilet tissue and human waste. Anything else will block them.
“Cleaning pots and pans with washing up liquid simply does not breakdown cooking fat and oil for good. It goes down the drain easily enough, but when it hits the cold sewers, it hardens into disgusting ‘fatbergs’ that cling to wet wipes and cause blockages in pipes.
Thames Water is also writing to customers in the worst affected streets and providing them with free ‘fat traps’ to collect used cooking oil in.
In addition the company is offering to pay the travel costs of 100 primary schools across West London so pupils can visit the company’s education centres at sewage works in Slough and Rickmansworth to learn about the water cycle and protecting the sewer system.
