Other than the fabulous taste they give food, there’s not much good about fats, oils and grease and a lot of bad–not just to health, but to infrastructure.
FOG, as goes the bilgy acronym for fats, oils and grease, are a major pollutant. The yare often poured down sinks. They accumulate and clog sewer pipes the way they clog arteries. They can cause untreated effluents to back up into homes or businesses, overflow through manholes into public grounds and parks, contaminate drinking water. Restaurants, fast-food joints and auto mechanic shops often spend big money to pump FOG traps or fix problems, while local governments do so to clean piping infrastructure, at taxpayer expense.
Many cities, including Daytona Beach and St. Augustine, have instituted government-led FOG programs that involve regulations of the disposal of fats, oils and grease in food establishments and other businesses, and inspections to ensure compliance, along with fees to sustain the programs. Daytona Beach claims its program “eliminated almost 200,000 gallons of FOG from entering the its sanitary sewer system” in its first year.
Flagler Beach is proposing to create just such a program, including a $300-a-year fee that food establishments would have to pay to defray the cost of enforcement.
“A lot of restaurants are causing problems, I know we had problems with the Funky Pelican and a couple of others that are messing up our system,” City Commissioner Jane Mealy said, noting that it’s draining the city’s resources when it has to repair the damage. “So we don’t need more grease being added.”
The Flagler Beach City Commission this evening will hear a proposed ordinance that “will apply to restaurants and other nonresidential facilities where food is prepared or served and requires those facilities to control FOG with grease traps or interceptors that are cleaned regularly along with other provisions,” according to a memo to city commissioners by Dale Martin, the city manager. His memo notes the hazards of clogged pipes resulting from FOG, but also how the clogging can harbor bacteria, “cause costly damage to lift station pumps and can threaten the environment.”
The city has drafted (or rather adapted) a FOG manual for restaurants to follow (if the ordinance is enacted) and prepared a maintenance log that food establishments, including (if not especially) fast-food restaurants, will have to maintain. The manual is an almost word-for-word replica of Daytona Beach’s and St. Augustine’s. The objective isn’t simply to keep the city’s pipes flowing and uncontaminated, but to comply with federal and state laws, which apply to FOG.
Restaurants and automotive shops typically have grease interceptors and oil separators in place. Those will be allowed to remain in Flagler Beach businesses as long as inspections show them to be regularly cleaned and maintained at the owner’s expense. If the devices are found to be out of compliance more than three times in a 12-month span, or if a business is renovated, expanded, sold or undergoes change of’ ownership, the equipment will have to be replaced with a device that follows the city’s manual specifications.
Grease interceptors and oil/water separators have to abide by city code, the Florida Plumbing Code, the Florida Administrative Code and other applicable regulations. Alternative devices will have to win city approval if they are to remain operative. The city’s new requirements regulate such things as interceptor volume (750 gallons minimum), manhole sizes, labels and weight-bearing standards, and forbid improvised fixes such as covering manholes with pavers and bricks. Under-the-sink grease traps will be allowed for existing facilities as long as they are not renovated or sold. They will be prohibited in new facilities. The manual also regulates installation, cleaning and maintenance.
Inspections would be unannounced–businesses will have to let inspectors in “at any time without notice”–and conducted at a frequency dependent on the size of the device. “Seems like enforcement could be arduous,” Commissioner Rick Belhumeur said, though he was withholding judgment before learning more about the proposal.
Businesses will be required to maintain copious documentation of compliance, including “as-built drawings, record of inspections, log of cleaning and maintenance activities and receipts, pumping company information, disposal information, and monitoring data. Records shall be kept on-site for a minimum of three years and be available for inspection and review by the City upon request.” Violations would be policed by the city’s code enforcement penalties.
Businesses will be assessed a $25-a-month fee. “That to me seems reasonable,” Mealy said. “I’m sure the restaurants aren’t going to be happy about it and we’ll hear from them, but it’s a reasonable fee.” The proposed ordinance leaves open the way for the commission to “adopt other reasonable fees as deemed necessary.”
John Lulgjuraj, the owner of Oceanside Beach Bar & Grill and president of the Flagler Beach Business Bureau, was largely supportive of the initiative, crediting Martin–the city manager–for moving forward on what had often been discussed but not acted upon. “Environment has always been big in our FB3 meetings,” he said, using the acronym for the Bureau. “We’re always looking to better our environment. If it’s something that’s an absolute need and necessity, I know all of us are gung ho for that,” especially if it protects the city’s infrastructure.
Lulgjuraj said he’ll be disseminating the proposed regulations to businesses, but had a couple of concerns, such as whether there would be any kind of financial assistance for smaller businesses that may have to upgrade to be in compliance–especially after several years of hurricanes, covid and hurricanes that have burdened several local businesses–and how often inspections would take place.
“It’s not the biggest thing on our agenda tonight, but I think it’s an imp issue,” Mealy said.
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