What Lies Beneath

Before: Fat "Ceiling"

Photograph courtesy Thames Water

Fat thickly coats a Thames Water-administered sewer in Reading (map), U.K., in May 2009.

The fat "ceiling" is the result of years of what the company calls sewer abuse—the pouring of food waste down sinks and the flushing of items other than toilet paper and human waste.
Once in the sewers, leftover meat fat gets mixed in with items like makeup wipes, diapers, cotton balls, condoms, and sanitary napkins, said Amy Dutton, a spokesperson for Thames Water, which is responsible for wastewater treatment for various U.K. jurisdictions.
"It all gets caught up with the fat, and the fat congeals," she explained. "And that's what causes the blockage."

More Than Just a Pretty Picture

 

Honduran “Desert”

Photograph by Bradley E. Clift

This Honduran “desert” was pasture and farmland before Hurricane Mitch arrived in November 1998. Torrential rains unleashed the full fury of a flooded Choluteca River, which washed away entire villages, threw trees like matchsticks, and transported enough sand from the mountains to create an artificial desert.
The deadly storm killed thousands of people and destroyed so much of Honduras’s agricultural and transportation infrastructure that President Carlos Flores Facusse said the disaster had destroyed 50 years of progress in his country.