The Lompoc City Council twice has reversed decisions by staff to allow two small businesses to avoid installing grease traps.
On Tuesday, the council supported an appeal by the Vitamin and Herb Store, which sought to be excluded from installing the grease trap, the second action since early June.
“I ask the council to rule in my favor because I think in this case common sense should prevail,” owner Heike Turchiano said.
Her business has a small kitchen that serves limited sandwiches, smoothies, salads and treats but does not use grease in the food preparation. Instead of mayonnaise, she said, the business uses vegan-naise.
“We do not cook,” she added. “We don’t use grease. We don’t have a stove, other than we have a little oven that we can heat things in if we want to for vegetables for salads that we have.”
In nine years at the location on West Central Avenue, she said, they have not had any blockages.
Turchiano said she gathered cost estimates for the installation ranging from $900 to $4,000.
“It was just ridiculous,” Turchiano said.
Utility Director Brad Wilkie told the council members about an Environmental Protection Agency inspection in April to assess the Lompoc wastewater treatment plant’s compliance with the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.
“The most business-friendly approach is to apply the Lompoc Municipal Code requirements equally to all businesses,” Wilkie said.
EPA representatives said that oil and grease violations could stem from not requiring those traps or interceptors, which capture grease, oil, lint, hair and sand to guard against wastes containing harmful ingredients.
“This could set a precedent for other similar food service establishments refusing to install the required traps/interceptors and could result in NPDES permit violations,” the EPA letter said.
Fines can run up to $6,000 per day per occurrence, Wilkie said, adding that the city Municipal Code allows under-sink traps instead of in-ground devices to make installation less costly for smaller businesses.
Grease devices have become increasingly common aspects of a pretreatment programs, EPA officials said.
Councilman Dirk Starbuck noted that the EPA report cited grease limit violations only for June 2018 and March 2017, contending that was long before fast-food restaurants were required to install grease traps. He complained that the report mentions the council had granted one appeal.
“What gets me here is it obviously didn’t appear that our staff was very council friendly on that either,” Starbuck said, reading from the report that the council did not support grease trap installation. “One, one grease trap we overruled. But these were told we are just cowboying it up here. I take that as an insult and it upset me.”
He also called out a staff report warning about fines and long-term liabilities by granting appeals.
The action came weeks after council members supported the appeal of P.J.’s Deli, which also had fought a city staff demand to install a grease trap.
During a June 4 council meeting, Charles Sommer from P.J.’s Deli argued against being forced to install a grease trap. The 37-year eatery does not have a gas line and doesn’t fry or grill foods.
“It’s absurd to think that after 37 years of no line stoppage and almost zero change in our menu that the city wants us to have a grease trap,” Sommer said.
Sommer said he has talked to plumbers to seek their opinions regarding whether P.J.’s Deli needs a grease trap.
“They laugh when they say no,” Sommer said.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.