Yorkshire Water is deploying their fat-busting bacteria in the sewers of Hull to try to remove some of the city’s most severe fat deposits.
The North of England water company have used fat-eating bacteria before on York’s sewer system, and because the removal technique was so successful they are using the same system to remove the fat from the sewers in Hull.
In the last six months alone teams of drainage engineers from Yorkshire Water have attended over 1,700 drain cleaning jobs in Hull where drains have become blocked.
The fat in the city’s sewers builds up when homeowners unwittingly pour cooking fat down plug holes. When cool, the fat solidifies and sticks to the insides of the pipes creating a congealed mess. Just last year alone Yorkshire Water removed over 2,000 tonnes of grease from the sewer pipes it maintains.
The pollution manager at Yorkshire water was quoted as saying on the BBC:
“We continue to encourage customers to think before they pour things like fat down their sink, we’re also looking at new and innovative approaches to tackling this age old problem to support current practices such as jetting sewers with a high pressure hose.
“The deployment of fat-busting bugs in our sewer network is an example of this, with these ‘good’ bacteria literally feasting on solidified fat in our sewer.”