If London and Baltimore have fatbergs, it's a good bet most if not all other cities do as well. I've read that in London many restaurants don't have grease removal devices. They are required, but the city hasn't been aggressive in enforcing compliance.
The only thing that Baltimore enforces is that their Water Dept. will chase people to the gates of hell to try and collect on eroneous water bills that are typically caused by either their piss poor record keeping or their leaky meters. Meter reader once told me he smashed his meter with a digging bar to keep getting "estimated bills" because he's been getting estimated bills for 15 years and they're ridiculously low. They're so far behind in repairing leaking and damaged meters he said it'll be years before they get to him, and then he'll just smash it again. Is it any wonder that city is the hole that it is? I worked in food sales in my previous life and used to call on a lot of establishments in Baltimore City. That is the main reason that our family almost never eats out
anywhere. What little health and food safety inspection is done in Baltimore is usually inept to incompetent.
Can't speak to plumbing inspections, but generally everything they do these days is all about the money and nothing to do with public safety or preservation/maintenance of their crumbly infrastructure. Just a giant black hole that the citizens of the State are forced to keep throwing good money into. Can't wait to see it simply collapse in on itself. Sorry for the cynicism, but it truly is an abyss. Fat bergs are the least of their problems. Every winter the number of antiquated mains that rupture increases and the "temporary" fixes just keep piling up. One day the tourist district will have a bad fire and that'll be the end when the hydrants can't fill a hose. Juxtaposed to that, their water treatment is surprisingly good, all things considered.
As for waste water, they're just lucky that they have that giant cesspool called the Chesapeake Bay to flush into. Don't eat anything that comes out of there either. Kayaked up Curtis Creek and got a close up look at the "legally permitted" polluters that dump into just that creek (gov't agencies and companies that have contributed lots of dough to Martin O'Malley's past campaigns top the list) and it's enought to make you throw up, or commit assault. All of their public blather about "Save the Bay" is nothing but feel good propaganda for the idiot masses to keep them asleep thinking everything's gonna be alright 'cuz the government's taking care of it. What a joke! The shear tonnage of pesticides and herbicides that their Agriculture Department ignore that end up there is staggering. It's all a total sham.
Invest in really good quality water filtration, and lots of replacement parts.
