London's water pipes clogged up by MILLIONS of invasive mussels with Thames Water paying £6m to remove them
•London's water pipes have got clogged up by the equivalent of more than four Olympic-sized swimming pools of invasive mussels.Thames Water says it spends more than £6million each year clearing freshwa...
•Their rapid rate of reproduction makes them incredibly difficult to manage, with a single mature mussel capable of producing up to one million eggs during a breeding season.
•TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say Once established, the mussels attach themselves to hard surfaces in dense colonies, coating the inside of water pipes, pumps and other infrastructure.
هذا الخبر من GB News. خبر يقدم أدوات ذكاء اصطناعي للتلخيص والترجمة والاستماع.
المصدر: GB News | Source: GB NewsLondon's water pipes have got clogged up by the equivalent of more than four Olympic-sized swimming pools of invasive mussels.
Thames Water says it spends more than £6million each year clearing freshwater Quagga mussels from pipes, with engineers often uncovering hundreds of thousands of shellfish during a single maintenance operation.
Quagga mussels, native to the Dnieper River basin in Eastern Europe, are considered one of the UK's most problematic invasive species.
Their rapid rate of reproduction makes them incredibly difficult to manage, with a single mature mussel capable of producing up to one million eggs during a breeding season.
TRENDINGStoriesVideosYour SayOnce established, the mussels attach themselves to hard surfaces in dense colonies, coating the inside of water pipes, pumps and other infrastructure.
As the colonies grow, they restrict water flow, reduce operational efficiency and increase the risk of service disruptions across the network.
Thames Water said the scale of the problem has intensified in recent years, forcing engineers to implement specialist methods to remove the shellfish.
Maintenance teams now routinely use high-powered hydro-blasting equipment to clear heavily infested pipes, while divers are sometimes deployed to tackle severe blockages.
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