Canning the grease

A monster lurks in the sewers of Sacramento—a monster of slime. The monster burps sewage onto lawns and onto streets at unexpected moments, and devours millions of dollars annually from the budgets of cash-strapped local governments.

For those in the know, the monster has a name: FOG. For those unaware, they simply keep feeding the beast.

FOG is shorthand for fats, oils and grease, liquids that are clogging Sacramento-area sewer systems at considerable expense.

“It gives pipes a little heart attack, like plaque in an artery,” Jessica Hess, spokeswoman for Sacramento’s Department of Utilities, told SN&R. “Most people probably think it’s OK to run it down the drain with some warm water. But if it doesn’t get disposed of properly, the oils grab the sides of the pipe [and solidify], and sometimes it clings to tree roots that have broken through. The pipe bursts and sewage pops up on the surface.”

Once at the street level, the waste creates a host of problems, from bad smells to street flooding to contaminating the environment to public-health concerns from exposure. In turn, utility crews have to respond to the oozing mess 24-seven to prevent the sewage from spreading.

In a given year, Hess estimates 50 percent of Sacramento Utilities Department service calls are due to FOG-related backups.

Claudia Goss, communications director for the Sacramento Area Sewer District, also said about half of SASD’s calls are because of grease in the pipes. She added that the cost to the district—which covers unincorporated parts of Sacramento County and extends from Rancho Cordova to Elk Grove—is roughly $3 million a year.

“It’s a significant problem for us,” Goss said. Her district is responsible for maintaining thousands of miles of pipes that collect sewage and flow to the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District. “Once it’s down the drain, people think it is out of sight and out of mind.”

The summertime and the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas are particularly busy times for service crews. In the summer, the large of number of greasy-food-serving fairs and festivals are big contributors to clogged pipes, Goss noted.

Restaurants are supposed to have interceptors installed below the sink or outside the building to trap grease—though some larger establishments have contracts with rendering plants.

“Restaurants, though, often fall behind in cleaning the interceptor or having it serviced,” Hess explained, leading to a messy backup. “For residents, often enough it happens right before someone is having a big dinner party or three minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve. All the service crews have these kinds of stories.”

With such problems in mind, some cities are cracking down on FOG in the pipes. This spring, San Francisco, also facing annual costs of more than $3 million, passed an ordinance targeting the problem. In April, the city’s board of supervisors voted unanimously to require food establishments to install grease-trapping devices, and to have them properly maintained and cleaned.

In Sacramento, the city’s ordinance does not allow dumping grease down the drain, and the building department has codes for installing interceptors at restaurants.

“In general, the worst violators tend to be apartment complexes and restaurants,” Hess said.

Goss said the SASD focuses more on residential customers.

“We don’t currently use an aggressive enforcement action approach on restaurants, since they are not considered to be a significant problem for us at this time,” she explained. “Since 2008, we have been working on outreach campaigns and guidelines rather than punitive measures, because it is much better if you can change people’s behavior.”

For information about handling fats, oils and grease, visit www.stoptheclog.com.