From the City of Fort Wayne’s website:
City, Festival cooperate to keep grease out of sewers
Food vendors to recycle cooking oilFort Wayne City Utilities and the Fort Wayne Newspapers Three Rivers Festival are working together to ensure that the cooking oil used by Festival food vendors does not go into downtown sewers.
City Utilities is paying to have two grease hoppers placed in the Sprint Food Alley. Festival officials have told food vendors that used cooking oil must be disposed of in the containers and should not be dumped into a manhole or storm drain inlet. Each container can hold 290 gallons or 1,200 pounds of grease.
Fats, oils and grease, especially fats used for cooking or produced as a by-product of cooking, can accumulate in sewers and cause blockages. When sewers become blocked with grease, sewer backups can occur. City Utilities spends over $300,000 each year cleaning grease out of sewer lines. Lots of grease does make its way through the sewer system and to the Water Pollution Control (sewage treatment) Plant where it interferes with the Plant’s treatment process.
The grease hoppers in the Sprint Food Alley will be available for grease disposal throughout the 10-day event. The hoppers will be emptied mid-week and removed on Monday, July 21.
City Utilities employees will be handing out information about keeping sewers “fat-free” during the Fort Wayne Newspapers Three Rivers Festival. City staff will have a booth at the Festival Marketplace from Thursday through Sunday during the Marketplace hours. City employees will also distribute grease information at the Children’s Fest at IPFW from 10 a.m. to 4 PM on Thursday, July 18, and Friday, July 19.
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Apparently things haven’t gotten bad enough for people to be stealing it yet…
Hi Michael, I had the same thoughts when I read the signs on the front of the bins. At TRF, they keep it locked behind a fenced-in area. My first job out of high school was at a Country Butcher Shop. We received very little compensation for by-products, as picked up by Wintzer & Sons. They would render and grind the stuff down into powders for use in such things as cosmetics, soaps, animal feeds, just to name a few. It was more of a huge service to us just by taking it off our hands. Now, as you pointed out in your link, the grease in particular does have a greater value.