Solutions include a new treatment plant that separates grease from water, clearer rules and a business inspector who checks grease traps.
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
Published April 12, 2004
NEW PORT RICHEY - It's a good thing you're not ingesting this goop.
The sickly swill contains all the bad stuff that drains off your food in a restaurant kitchen: the fat, the oil, the grease. It collects and congeals in grease traps until someone pumps it out and hauls it away.
But the same stuff that can clog your arteries can clog up the sewer pipes. If it's not disposed of properly, the greasy goo can cause sewage pipes to back up and sewage treatment plants to temporarily shut down.
"The wastewater plant depends on bacteria to digest the waste there," said Doug Bramlett, the assistant county administrator overseeing utilities. "When a grease load comes in, it basically kills the bacteria, the process stops and the filter gets plugged up."
The grease globs have caused so many problems at sewage plants that Pasco County is fighting back with a one-two punch.
A special grease compliance inspector, hired last summer, is visiting businesses to make sure they have grease traps to keep the gunk from simply going down the drain.
And a $1.14-million grease processing plant is being built to handle the truckloads of grease trap sludge - an improvement over the current practice of mixing the grease with the sewage being treated at the Shady Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The current practice is "inefficient, and it's not conducive to wastewater treatment plant operations," which rely on waste-eating bacteria that can suffocate if there's too much oily residue in the mix, said Doug Yowell, the operations and maintenance manager for the county utilities system.
The grease plant, which is being built next to the Shady Hills sewage treatment plant, should be accepting truckloads of grease within a year. It will be able to treat 15,000 gallons a day and store another 20,000 gallons in a holding tank, Yowell said.
"We'll be able to treat it roughly about as fast as it comes in," Yowell said.
The process is simple: The oily waste will run through a drum lined with diatomaceous earth, a fossil-shell dust as fine as talcum powder. The greasy solids, which have the color and consistency of caramel, will be shaved off and buried at a lined landfill nearby. The degreased water will be treated at the Shady Hills sewer plant.
In the meantime, the county's grease man - compliance inspector David James - is working with businesses to keep the nasty goo out of the sewer pipes.
Since coming on board June 30, James has visited about 700 restaurants, convenience stores, delis, grocery stores and nursing homes - in short, every type of business that serves food.
Sometimes he finds traps that are too full. Often he sees things that don't belong with the greasy goo.
"I find straws in grease traps every day," James said. "Sometimes I see pieces of recognizable food. I've pulled out whole pieces of linguine. I've seen spoons, silverware."
All of those items belong in the trash, not the sewer pipes, he said.
"People need to put strainers in their sink," he said. "You can go into any dollar store and get one for a buck. They're not expensive."
About 50 food-serving businesses James visited didn't even have grease traps. Often they were smaller shops that didn't know they needed them, he said. But even gas stations serving nachos and hot dogs must have one, he said.
The county is trying to make the rules clearer with a revamped grease ordinance that comes before the County Commission on May 11. It would require businesses to pump out their grease traps at least once every 90 days and check them for maintenance every month.
"I believe people want to do the right thing, but sometimes they don't know what the right thing is," James said.
- Bridget Hall Grumet can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is bhall@sptimes.com
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Don't toss fat scraps, frying oil or leftover food down the drain. County officials say it's better to throw those things in the garbage than to send them through the sewers, where the greasy materials can clog the pipes.
