In 2024, Sydney’s beautiful beaches were flooded with poo balls. Or, rather, so-called poo balls. They’re commonly referred to by a different, still profoundly disgusting name: fatbergs. They’re gross, disgusting, abhorrent, foul-smelling blobs of pollution made up of all the runoff of modern life.
Cooking oil, soap residue, human hair, human fecal matter, prescription drugs, veterinary medications, PFAS “forever chemicals,” and even traces of meth and THC have been found in Sydney’s fatbergs. The same goes for all the fatbergs that wash ashore all over the world. Whatever goes down the drain can end up as a fatberg.
The smell of Sydney’s fatbergs alone was enough to send experts retreating. One chemist described it as worse than anything he’d ever encountered.
Fixing Sydney’s Fatberg Problem Is Going to Be Extremely Expensive
Officials eventually found the source of these disgusting, hellish globs of goo. Investigators traced the debris to Sydney’s Malabar Ocean sewer system, which handles wastewater for roughly two million people. Deep inside it, a massive fatberg had grown to a size normally reserved for marine mammals and mid-sized aircraft. When heavy rain or power disruptions increased pumping pressure, chunks of this waxy monster broke free, rolled into small balls, and headed for the coastline.
So far, about 53 tonnes of sludge have been removed, but most of the fatberg remains lodged where machinery can’t easily reach it. The plan to clean it all up is going to cost a pretty penny and will take a while: $3 billion for a 10-year-long overhaul of the wastewater system led by the New South Wales government.
The plan takes a multipronged approach that mixes updated treatment standards, addresses the strain on the sewer network, and incorporates a public education campaign to let people know that they should keep fats, oils, and a variety of greases out of their drains.
That is, unless they want to keep getting black, disgusting, foul-smelling, greasy alien-like blobs of pollution covering their once beautiful beaches.
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