Fish fry season has big impact on water treatment systems
Grease buildup is evident, costly at Montgomery County wastewater facilities.
Fish fries attract large crowds in the Dayton region during Lent, and Montgomery County Environmental Services workers have a special view of the events’ popularity.
The telltale sign? Grease buildup at the county’s two wastewater treatment facilities in Kettering and West Carrollton.
Eastern plant water reclamation manager Donnie Hartman said Montgomery County workers help maintain thousands of miles of sewer lines, and they say removal of oils and grease can be challenging and costly.
Montgomery County’s Eastern and Western Wastewater Treatment Facilities process anything that goes down drains or pipes in parts of Montgomery and Greene counties, working to treat water before it’s discharged back into the Little Miami watershed.
Hartman’s plant serves many people living in Kettering, portions of Beavercreek, Dayton and Oakwood.
The past few Easter seasons have been busy for water treatment employees.
This year, the county spent $5,000 for two 35-gallon drums of a chemical that separates grease from county water as a result of grease buildup likely from the spring fish fry season.
Burdensome, too, is the time and labor put into resolving maintenance issues at both plants and unclogging the public side of sewer lines, Hartman said.
When cooking grease is sent down pipes, it solidifies after it cools and clings to the top of a pipe’s interior. Some grease will also adhere to bits of sediment that travel through the water system, creating large grease clusters that stick to water treatment facility equipment in different stages of the treatment process.
“These are the things that should be going to the landfill from your home, not to the landfill from here,” Hartman said.
The county’s two plants treat approximately 35 million gallons of sewage every day. Wastewater workers maintain thousands of miles of sewer lines, which makes maintenance and removal of oils and grease more challenging, he said.
But people should be aware of grease buildup year-round. Grease can take years to build up in pipes before it becomes a problem, Hartman said.
Cooking grease should not be poured down any drain. Rather, it should be poured into an aluminum can, solidified, and then thrown away in a regular trash can.
Residents can also pour grease into aluminum foil, but they should never pour it into a material that can melt with heat, Hartman said.
Larger quantities of grease can be taken to the county’s Household Hazardous Waste dropoff events from 1-7 p.m. every Tuesday from March through October at the Solid Waste District’s Recycling Canopy, 1001 Encrete Lane, Moraine.