All pain, no drain - Dumbbells block Kent sewer
Artificial intelligence (AI) in Kent helped us find a weighty blockage beneath the streets of Folkestone - which threatened to cause messy misery to the local community.
A fatberg was uncovered, thanks to our electronic sewer monitors picking up a buildup of wastewater where it shouldn't have been.
And once the team arrived on site, they were shocked to discover the cause of the problem was a discarded dumbbell gym weight.
Blocked sewers are the single biggest cause of pollution incidents – from manholes spilling into streams to gardens filling with sewage. But the very worst kind is internal flooding where sewers back up and pour into sinks, showers and loos.
More than 34,000 radar sensors are constantly monitoring sewer levels and in Chalcroft Road, Folkestone, we arrived before the sewer could flood and cleared out a nasty fatberg.
Daniel McElhinney, Proactive Operations Control Manager at Southern Water said: “The sensors take a weight off our minds and measure the level of sewage flowing under manhole blockage hotspots. The AI machines learn normal sewer behaviours, then can tell the difference between morning and evening rushes, rain in the system and a blockage forming.
“We’re spotting hundreds of potential blockages before it’s too late. Our teams use high pressure jets to clear sewers thanks to the pinpoint accuracy of the AI machines.”
Most customers don’t realise the average suburban sewer are only the diameter of an orange or a tennis ball. It doesn’t take much cooking fat to combine with other unflushables such as sanitary products and wet wipes to form a fatberg.
Flush only the three Ps down the loo – pee, paper and poo.
Everything else goes in the bin - Nappies, baby wipes, tampons, sanitary towels, panty liners, colostomy bags and condoms should be bagged and binned. Cleansing wipes, ear buds, dental floss, plastic razors and cotton pads.