The biggest ever fatberg found in Western Australia has been pulled from a sewer, weighing in at 30,000kg.
Fatbergs are made up of material that cannot dissolve in water – such as oil, grease and wet wipes flushed down sinks and toilets – which then pile up and stick together.
The whopping mass of waste was pulled from the WA Water Corporation’s Woodman Point wastewater treatment facility south of Perth this week as part of a preventative maintenance program to “keep the pipes flowing”.
“We estimate it’s the biggest we’ve ever seen in WA,” a Water Corporation spokesperson said on Friday.
The corporation’s maintenance spans 100 wastewater treatment facilities, hundreds of sewer pump stations and around 18,000km of wastewater main through WA.
“It’s a year-round, time-consuming and expensive job to unclog this waste material,” the spokesperson said.
And it was “entirely preventable”.
“The issue is that non-flushable material doesn’t disintegrate properly and gets matted with all the fats, oils and grease that people put down the sink.”
This forms “fatbergs” in sewer pipes, and large mounds of waste material at wastewater treatment plants.
They cause blockages in the sewer network and clogs wastewater pumps, which can result in an overflow of sewage or wastewater in people’s homes.
“None of this material should be in the wastewater network – it should never have been flushed down the loo,” the spokesperson said.
Water Corporation has seen an increase in blockages caused by fatbergs and non-flushable materials. They responded to 1,329 preventable wastewater blockages in 2023 – up from 1,152 in 2022, and 918 in 2021.
“We do our bit but also need the community to help us keep our sewer network flowing freely,” the spokesperson says.
They warn that not all products labelled “flushable” can indeed be flushed down the toilet.
“The vast majority of wet wipes, for example, don’t disintegrate like toilet paper.”