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Breakfast mainstay an underground disaster

Posted On: Aug. 13, 2018 1:00 PM CST

Breakfast mainstay an underground disaster

America’s favorite breakfast aroma is oozing its way into municipal drain pipes, making for a hidden disaster to the tune of 20-foot-long buildups of bacon grease.

And that’s only in Baltimore, according to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday that shed light on the country’s most secret pastime: That everybody pours their hot leftover bacon grease down the drain even though they know it’s bad for pipes.

The report focused on residential clogs — and that some people seem to not understand that bacon grease, once cooled, turns into blobs of fat — but documented Baltimore’s experience with scraping out 24-inch pipes that had been 85% blocked, according to the report.

And “despite years of campaigns by public-works departments and health organizations, cities haven’t been able to stop people from pouring grease down the drain, resulting in catastrophic buildups of sludge in sewer systems,” according to the report.