Divers swim through 90 feet of raw sewage to unclog giant, hairy ‘fatberg’

                                  

A team of divers in South Carolina went plunging to the dirtiest depths — up to 90 feet — in raw sewage to unclog pipes blocked by so-called “flushable” wipes, officials said.

The Charleston Water System announced their assault Monday on social media against non-flushable items that clogged pumps beginning on Thursday at the Plum Island Wastewater Treatment Center, including thousands of baby wipes, a baseball and a large piece of metal.

“Since then, we worked 24/7 to get them out,” the agency tweeted. “We started by using a series of bypass pumps to handle the normal daily flow.”

Three days later, the bypass pumps were back to normal levels, but not before a team of divers had to travel up to 90 feet down in total darkness while using their bare hands to “find and identify the obstruction,” according to the agency.

“As we expected, they came up with these large masses of wipes in their first two loads, with more to come,” Charleston Water tweeted. “They also found a baseball and a big piece of metal. Don’t flush stuff like this. Joking of course, but you should only flush #1, #2 and toilet paper.”

The agency also shared other pictures of large, blackened masses of flushable wipes removed from the water system in recent years, including a revolting adult-size, congealed heap.

A final set of dives were conducted Tuesday. Divers were then rinsed off with bleach after the “nice long swim,” the agency said on Twitter.

“Glad to report that we’ve returned to normal operation today,” the tweet continued.

Andy Fairey, the agency’s chief operating officer, told the Charleston Post and Courier that other items like tampons, string, hair and makeup pads contributed to the sickening fatberg of baby wipes, oil, fat and grease.

The wipes, however, are a “huge portion of the material we pull out,” Fairey told the newspaper.

Charleston is the latest city plagued with pipes blocked by fatbergs. Officials in Baltimore announced last September that a giant lump of fats, oils, grease and wet wipes was to blame for an overflow that dumped some 1.2 million gallons of sewage into the Jones Falls watershed. The mass was discovered in a sewer main near Baltimore’s Penn Station, where it blocked an estimated 85 percent of a 24-inch-wide, 100-year-old pipe, city officials said.

Just weeks earlier, engineers in London announced they were battling a 143-ton, 820-foot fatberg that backed up a sewer beneath the streets of the city’s historic Whitechapel area.