Councilmember Carol Alvarado, whose lack of oversight of the Mayor Pro Tem’s office dominated the news for weeks, is back in the news with a proposal that will surely cause Mayor White to frown less than he did over the Pro Tem fiasco: a new revenue stream!
KHOU-11’s Doug Miller reports:
With Houston’s thousands and thousands of restaurants, there’s a whole lot of grease going down the drain
Sometimes, it stinks.
It’s a smelly situation that’s now the center of a fight at Houston City Hall.
If you run a restaurant, you cook a lot of meals, clean a lot dishes and produce a lot of grease.
So Houston restaurants must install grease traps to keep the stuff from clogging sewers.
“My grease trap, personally, here, is a 1,000-gallon grease trap,” said Michael Massa, owner, Massa’s restaurant.
Houston spends an estimated $800,000 a year cleaning fats, oils and grease out of sewers.
And city officials say state regulators fined Houston another $1 million because of sewer overflows.
“We’re proposing $50,” said Carol Alvarado, Houston city councilmember.
Now city councilmembers are considering imposing some new rules.
“So we’re asking the grease trap owners to pay a $50 fee. And then they’d also have to clean out their grease traps four times a year,” said Alvarado.
But most of the grease flushing down Houston’s sewer system comes not from restaurants but from the kitchen sinks in houses and apartment complexes.
“Actually, only 20 percent of the problem comes from the restaurants. 80 percent is due to other entities,” said Sue Lovell, Houston City Councilmember.
So restaurant owners think the proposed new rules would basically pick on the wrong people.
“It’s all really a money grab. This is targeting a business that is not the root of all the problems that are happening with the grease problems.” Massa said.
Of course it’s a money grab. If it were merely about keeping the grease traps clean, the city could simply require that restaurants clean out grease traps four times a year, take a year to assess the problem, and then consider if further action is necessary. But why stop there, when there’s money to be made for the city?
As for the bolded part of Doug Miller’s story — Anne Linehan astutely pointed out to me an earlier blogHOUSTON post that cited the Brazosport News on that very topic:
State enviro regulators have ordered H-Town to pay nearly $1 million in penalties for unauthorized discharges from 11 of its wastewater treatment plants. One fine is for $969,195. Then another fine of $17,500 was added for additional infractions that occurred at a later date.
So, is this the fine to which Miller is referring cryptically? Is the city trying to suggest that the wastewater treatment facility discharge penalties were directly related to the alleged grease problem? If so, is Alvarado trying effectively to get restaurants to pay the penalties? If not, then are restaurants being asked unfairly to help pay the penalty (and has the real problem been addressed by city officials)?
Those are the sorts of questions we’d like to see local journalists answer in their reporting, instead of so frequently repeating talking points.
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