Forge partnerships for the disposal of food oil, says health inspector
WESTERN BUREAU:
THE ST James Health Department is recommending that restaurants in Montego Bay forge partnerships with waste recycling companies and farmers to dispose of waste food oil in a responsible way, instead of dumping it in the city’s drains.
Sherika Lewis, the acting chief public health inspector for St James, told Thursday’s monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation (StJMC) that the health department devised the recommendations after checking for grease traps at 36 restaurants in Montego Bay, in keeping with a previous directive from the municipal corporation.
“To date, we have inspected 36 restaurants within the township, and based on the reports of our officers, only 11 of them have grease traps. Of the 11, nine were found to be satisfactory, while the other two required cleaning. Of the other 25 without grease traps, most are situated on plazas,”Lewis said.
“In a bid to control indiscriminate disposal of used oil, the health depar tment recommends advocating for a strengthened partnership between recycling companies, restaurants, and cookshops, and for the National Water Commission to determine the presence of oil or grease in the sewerage system.We also encourage a partnership with farmers to use the oil as animal feed, and also to recycle the oil into biofuel such as diesel,” added Lewis.
As it relates to the food establishments that are built on plazas, Lewis said that part of the reason for their lack of grease traps is that the restaurants are built in retrofitted spaces within the plazas.
“For some of the plazas that rent these shops, the owners and operators of restaurants retrofitted empty shops to house their operations. Developers of plazas should be required to add a grease trap as part of their proposed drainage system,”said Lewis.
In response, Montego Bay Deputy Mayor Richard Vernon suggested that constant monitoring should take place to ensure the regular upkeep of grease traps.
“In regard to the grease traps, we probably need a system in place to do continuous monitoring and control, and to ensure that these establishments are in compliance, not just to check them today and then tomorrow they revert to how they normally operate, but to ensure we do it deliberately so that we may protect the environment,” said Vernon.“We also take the point that we might need to consider a requirement for plazas to ensure that they have grease traps.”
The health department’s investigation was done in response to reports last month that grease and oil from food establishments had contributed to sewage overflows in the Montego Bay business district in October.
Concerns have also been raised that improperly disposed food grease may have contributed to the build-up of waste in Montego Bay’s draining system, which led to sections of the western city being flooded earlier last week.