Metro Vancouver may consider charging restaurants a flat fee or user-polluter charges to deal with the problem of grease being dumped down drains - a practice that costs the regional district $2 million a year in clogged pipes.
The suggestions are among several options included in a Metro Vancouver staff report aimed at recovering the costs of unclogging sanitary sewers.
Such a sewer overflow may have cost the City of Richmond $480,000 last year - one of the biggest in Metro Vancouver's history - to fix a sewer main that ruptured after being clogged with grease. Restaurants were suspected of dumping grease down the pipes.
In 2005, the Gilbert Trunk Main in Richmond also faced significant grease buildup, which cost Metro Vancouver an estimated $1 million per kilometre to rehabilitate the sewer.
The options, which will be presented to restaurants and commercial kitchens as part of a continuing consultation process, include an annual flat rate for treatment costs or a user/ polluter pay fee for re-inspection and resampling of effluent if restaurants are deemed to not be complying with regulations.
Metro Vancouver already requires restaurants to install grease traps to collect oil and grease from its kitchens. As part of the latest consultation, the report suggests changes to the design and capacity of grease traps.
If most commercial kitchens complied, the report said, "it is anticipated that there would be a substantial reduction in grease blockages of sewers and the consequential sewer overflows and costs for cleaning sewers."
But only about 10 per cent of Metro's 3,000 restaurants and commercial kitchens now comply with the grease trap regulations, which are enforced by local municipalities.
The regional district can take non-complying restaurants to court, but the penalties levied against them aren't worth high court costs.
Regional politicians have been appealing to the province since 1994 to change legislation to give the sewage district ticketing powers, so it can fine businesses directly.
But the Environment Ministry said this year it was not a priority, and such a move would have to wait until at least 2014.
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