The ordinance under consideration will provide revisions to Municipal Code Chapters 100, 101 and 102 which address sanitary sewers and the regulation industrial waste. The WRA recently updated the Fats, Oils and Grease (FOG) requirements for Food Service Establishments (FSE's) so that the said requirements are less restrictive for FSE's. The WRA also recently updated the allowable limits of various pollutants that can be discharged into the sanitary sewer system. These limits are required and dictated by the Iowa DNR and need to be updated periodically.
As part of the Second Amended and Restated Agreement for the Des Moines Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority (WRA), each Participating Community is to enact industrial pretreatment ordinances in a form consistent in all respects with those approved by the WRA Board. These ordinances need to be updated at this time to reflect the proposed changes by the WRA. These changes are a result of the need to address concerns with the FOG ordinance and to update the pollutant limits as required by the Iowa DNR:
- Previously, the WRA Technical Committee asked for a complete review of the FOG Ordinance based on some concerns that member communities had received about several issues with the current FOG Ordinance, (i.e., sizing of grease interceptors, difficult process, exceptions, etc.)
- The WRA held a series of meetings over the last two years with building and plumbing officials, restaurant owners and associations, Tech and Board members to obtain input from all parties involved with the FOG Ordinance.
- As a result of these meetings, a number of changes to the FOG ordinance were proposed by the committees and ultimately approved by the WRA.
- The proposed changes in the FOG Ordinance will reduce the sizing for intermittent use FSEs like church cafeterias, concession stands and schools and some traditional FSEs because of the 12 and 20 hour storage factor change.
- Improved communication with WRA Building officials will help spread accurate information of grease interceptor requirements and exceptions
- The FOG Ordinance was working well, but needed to be tweaked to better reflect the variety of FSEs in the WRA service area
- The WRA received buy-in from various traditional FSEs and building officials on the changes made to the FOG ordinance
- The Local Limits for pollutant discharges changes to the Pretreatment Ordinance are required and dictated by the IDNR and need to be updated periodically based on actual treatment plant data.
in order to finalize the proposed changes, each participating community within the WRA needs to update their municipal code to reflect the said changes. Staff recommends that these changes and the associated ordinance be approved by the City Council.
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