NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 18, 1999

CARY TO HOLD WORKSHOP ON GREASE RELIEF

CARY, NC – Hundreds of commercial "fat cats" will be told how to get the grease out as Cary continues its fight for the environment. Tomorrow at 10:00AM in the Cary Town Council Chambers, State and local officials will lead an educational workshop for non-residential sewer customers who each day face finding an appropriate way of discarding used fats, greases, and oils. These customers include restaurants as well as schools, hotels, grocery stores, nurseries, day care centers, and retirement centers. When fats, greases and oils are dumped down drains, they end up in the Town’s sewer system and eventually clog it up. These clogs result in increased maintenance by the Town, and sometimes the grease makes it way to pump stations in the system before it coagulates. When this happens, pumps and alarms can fail and overflows can result.

Cary suffered a 3,120-gallon residential sanitary sewer spill on October 9^th caused by a grease build-up. The untreated waste from that spill escaped from a manhole and reached an unnamed tributary of the Neuse River, but no fish-kill or environmental damage occurred as repair crews were working to contain the spill within 45 minutes of its report.

Tuesday’s workshop is part of the Town of Cary’s comprehensive grease and oils control program to reduce frequency and severity of sanitary sewer overflows as a consequence of excessive grease accumulation in Town maintained sanitary sewer collection systems.

The program has two primary components: (1) educating the more than 340 Cary restaurants and other businesses which prepare or serve hot foods or prepare cold foods using dressings or other condiments; and (2) enforcing pretreatment rules and exacting penalties when the rules are not followed. These rules include a requirement for the installation of grease holding tanks at those affected businesses and fines of $1,000 when a wastewater discharge results in the failure of the Town’s sewer system.

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