That's the fatberg. Thanks, Macomb County Department of Public Works!
People, really -- who raised you? Who told you it was OK to pour grease down the sink drain? Because brothers and sisters, that is NOT OK.
If you doubt me, ask Candice Miller, the Macomb County Public Works commissioner. She ought to go medieval on your ignorant selves, all because of the Macomb Fatberg.
What is a fatberg? It's when grease poured into sewers combines with the stuff that's supposed to be down there and creates a hellish problem we're calling a fatberg but man, that is a polite term for it. Let The Detroit News describe it:
The 100-foot-long glob was found in an 11-foot diameter pipe called the Lakeshore Interceptor. The pipe runs from 15 Mile Road north to 21 Mile Road between Gratiot Avenue and Interstate 94.
Officials said the fatberg was 11 feet wide and as tall as six feet in some places and consisted of fats, oils and grease that collected in the pipe and mixed with solids flushed into the sewer, such as baby wipes.
“To put it simply, this fatberg is gross," Miller said in a statement.
Gross? That's putting it mildly. A poop/bacon grease/baby wipe blob sounds like the villain in a disaster movie. And if any aspiring screenwriters would like to make it so, remember you have to animate somehow, perhaps by adding toxic waste or some body parts or a lonely raccoon that lives down there. But we digress.
To be sure, the problem isn't just residential grease. Restaurants apparently do this appalling practice, too. Anyway, if you'd like to see part of this repulsive thing up close, Miller is holding a press conference Thursday that will feature "pieces of the fatberg" by way of discussing the problem.
If you'd like to cut to the chase now, here are the Deadline Detroit rules:
- Don't pour grease down the drain.
- Find an empty can, pour it in there, refrigerate until it's solid, and throw it away.
- Don't flush baby wipes or any other so-called flushable wipes. That stuff goes in the trash.
- Basically, if it says it's flushable on the package, it probably isn't.
Sewers are built to handle solid waste from your body, and toilet paper. That's it. Do better.
