Here’s a little public service announcement this morning for residents and leaders of any city… in the world (remove sunglasses and insert dramatic music here)!

Today I was educated on something I never knew was an actual problem, but it’s something we can all work together on to solve and prevent.

What’s below our city?

Sewers. Exactly.

Now I used to think the only thing in our sewers was waste and adolescent turtles that know karate and only come out at night to fight bad guys and eat pizza, but I was apparently wrong.

Sewers run under out cities like arteries and veins, and much like arteries and veins, they can apparently get clogged up. Not clogged up like I clog up my toilet after nacho night, but clogged up like your heart gets clogged up and causes a fatal heart attack.

Such was the case in Baltimore, Maryland recently.

What are you looking at there? Welcome to Baltimore’s sewer. You’ll see… no ninja turtles… no singing Christmas poo.. just a giant congealed glob of fat.

This is known as a *Fatberg* and crews say it took about 50 to 60 years for this blockage of fat, grease and oil to form. As you can imagine, it’s not just fat, grease and oil. Mixed in with that you have decades of flushable wipes, diapers, cotton swabs, bandages, a bunch of plastic bags, rubber gloves, pens, batteries, pennies, coins, anything that you flush down your drain.

As our sewer systems age these fatbergs are becoming more and more common. They just had to remove one on London.

So just like your heart, if you have a blocked artery, you have to go in and perform a bypass. That’s what you see in the video above. It’s a robotic camera with a 2,000 pound per square inch pressure washer and an industrial vacuum goes in and clears the fatberg.

Now again, these fatbergs need to be caught sooner than later. I actually found (doctored) footage of them spotting the one in Baltimore.

Getting regular check ups can save your city’s life. The fatberg in Baltimore took $60,000 and a week to remove. Cheaper than an actual heart surgery, I imagine.

There are preventative measures you can take so your city’s arteries don’t get clogged up.

1. don’t treat your toilet like a trash can. Whatever you flush down your drain can contribute to these clogs.
2. Don’t feed your sewer line red meat.
3. Make sure your sewer line is getting at least 30 minutes of cardio a day.

Together, we can save our city’s life.