Slip-Up on a Grease Problem

Many homeowners have learned the hard way that pouring kitchen grease down the sink eventually guarantees an expensive call to the plumber. Yet many Los Angeles restaurant owners haven’t learned this lesson because city taxpayers pay the plumbing bills.

Grease blockages result when hot fat from restaurant skillets and fryers is dumped into sinks; 41% of the city’s sewer spills between 1997 and 1999 were from this cause, according to a federal audit. That translates into 200 to 250 emergency calls a year to city sanitation crews.

The fat congeals as it enters the sewer pipes, and the hardened grease can block them, causing backups and breakage that spill foul-smelling raw sewage onto city streets.

Sewage spills cause substantial health and pollution problems locally. The county spent $1.6 billion in recent years to upgrade its Hyperion sewage treatment plant, now considered state-of-the-art. But spills and breakage along the 6,500 miles of old city sewer pipes, occurring at an alarming rate of almost two per day, pose a continuing public health danger.

Monday the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state officials filed suit against Los Angeles, demanding that the city control the spills. Whether litigation is the appropriate step is an open question, but the grease is certainly a solvable problem.

City ordinances already require restaurants with 150 seats or more to regulate their disposal of cooking oil. Owners must install grease traps in their pipes or under their sinks or they must collect the grease and recycle it.

City officials are considering extending these rules to smaller eateries as well. They should. Owners of corner burger joints and neighborhood taco stands understandably fear that adding grease disposal costs will erase already slim profits. But such low-tech options as storing congealed grease on site and contracting for its pickup cost a fraction of systems installed in the plumbing.

The alternative to city action is more sewer breaks and more taxpayer expenses for repairs. Prevention is clearly the way to go, even if it raises the cost of a burger by a few cents.