2021 USDA FOG Abatement Training:Fats, Oil, Grease – Why do we Care, and What Does It Cost?

Module 1

Four Modules, Four Sessions Total

This training is sponsored by a grant from the USDA Rural Utilities Service (RUS)

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www.pprc.org

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WWW.WESTERNSTATESALLIANCE.ORG

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FOG ProgramModule 1

Fats, Oils, Grease -

Why do we Care and

What is the Cost?

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This training is brought to you courtesy of a

US Department of Agriculture Technical Assistance Grant

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Clayton Brown

10 years in Utility Construction

30 years, Source Control Manager, Clean Water Services in OregonManaged the Industrial Pretreatment, FOG, P2 and Stormwater programs

Currently Program Manager, Western States Alliance, PPRC

Bachelors of Biology, Portland State UniversityMasters in Business Administration, George Fox University

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Module 1 Outline

• Establishing the Need for a FOG Program• Data Needed• Excess Operation & Maintenance Costs• Staff Costs• Program Development Costs• Cost-Benefit Analysis

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Clayton Brown

Vincent Chavez

Michael O’Dwyer

Lauren Huey

Ken Loucks

Jill Hoyenga

Ken Grimm

Andria Swann

Ed Gilmore

John Harland

Jean Waters

Krysta Thornton

Pollution Prevention Resource Center

Western States Alliance

Oregon ACWA

AZ-FOG

APWA Pre-FOG

R8PA

NACWA

CIPCA

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Why are we Talking About FOG?

Fats, Oils, Grease (FOG)

Yellow vs. Brown Grease

Why FOG is a Concern

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Establishing the Need for

a FOG Program

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Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSO)

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FOG in Sanitary Sewer Lines Causes Increase in Maintenance Costs, Reduces Infrastructure Life

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How do you Calculate the Cost of FOG to your Municipality?

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“An effective FOG program must be data-driven, not effort-driven.”

Gary Christiansen, City of Seattle Public Works

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FOG Cost -Data Needed

What data do you need?

How do you collect the data?

How is the data stored?

Can the data be easily analyzed?

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Excess Line Maintenance Costs

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How many lineal feet of collection system are being cleaned in excess of the normal cleaning cycle (usually once every three to five years)?

What is the City’s cost per foot to clean lines?

Is traffic control necessary, and if so, what is the cost?

Where is the FOG disposed of, and what is the cost per pound?

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Polling Slide

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FOG Lines

• Where are your FOG lines?

• How often are they cleaned?

• What are equipment and staffing needs?

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Emergency line cleaning

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FOG MappingFSEs with proximity to City Grease Lines

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A Brief Review

• Material Covered • Establishing the Need for a FOG Program• Data Needed• Excess Line Maintenance Costs

• What’s Next…• Excess Treatment Plant Costs• Staff Costs• Program Development Costs• Cost-Benefit Analysis

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Excess Pump Station Maintenance Costs

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How many pump stations are

impacted by FOG?

What is the cost to clean FOG from a

pump station?

How many air relief valves are being

impacted by FOG?

What is the cost to clean the air relief

valves?

What is the efficiency loss for failure to clean air

relief valves?

Is excess energy being used due to

FOG impacts?

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Excess Treatment Plant Operational Costs

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Removing grease on the

primary

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Foaming at the aeration

basin

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Tracking staff costs

Can you track costs via a time card code?

How granular should you be?

Code for line maintenance for FOG

Code for treatment plant maintenance for FOG

Code for pump station maintenance for FOG

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Polling Slide

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Cost Estimate for Implementing a FOG Program

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How many Food Service Establishments (FSEs) are in the City?

How many FSEs have been thoroughly inspected?

What data has been input for each FSE?

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Staff Costs

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How many FSEs are in your service area?

How many FSE inspections can be completed in one day?

How many Full Time Employees (FTE) will be needed to initiate the program?

How many FTE will be needed to maintain the program?

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FOG Program Examples

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• City of Vancouver, Washington has approximately 800 FSEs and has two full time FOG inspectors

• Washington County, Oregon has approximately 2,400 FSEs and has one full-time and five part-time FOG inspectors

• City of Portland has approximately 4,100 FSEs and three full-time inspectors and a program manager

• Friday Harbor, Washington has about 75 FSEs and one part-time inspector

• Wilsonville, Oregon has 99 FSEs and one full-time industrial pretreatment inspector who is also responsible for the FOG program

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What Staffing Level is Appropriate?

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• Initial FSE inspection setting up FOG Program estimate 3-4 hr/FSE

• Efficient FOG program maintenance inspections estimate 1 hr/FSE

• Include travel time• Include inspection data entry time• Include pump-out data review

time• Estimate that 10% FSEs will need

re-inspection more frequently than once per year

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A Brief Review

• Material Covered• Establishing the Need for a FOG Program• Data Needed• Excess Line Maintenance Costs• Excess Treatment Plant Costs• Staff Costs

• What’s Next…• Program Development Costs• Introduction to Cost-Benefit Analysis

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Ken Grimm?

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Planning

Take time to map out what your FOG Program outcomes should be

Identify measures to track. Measures should demonstrate that outcomes have been met, or are being achieved

• Which staff will be involved in program development?

• One sewer district had a Division Manager (part time), a Program Manager (part time), a communication specialist (part time) and an Environmental Specialist (full time) involved in program development for a year.

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Program Development• Put legal authority into

place• Identify all stakeholders• Identify all “moving

parts” of the program• Implement, gather data,

analyze, repeat

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Polling Slide

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Program Development Costs

• Which staff will be involved in program development?• One sewer district had a Division Manager (part time), a Program Manager

(part time), a communication specialist (part time) and an Environmental Specialist (full time) involved in program development for a year.

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Data Needed

• FSE Data (partial list)• Physical Address (and GIS data or latitude/longitude)• Potential FOG Loading of FSE (very high, high, medium, low)• Proximity of FSE to a FOG-impacted sanitary sewer line (FOG

line)• Type(s) of FOG pretreatment• Interceptor maintenance history• Fixtures and drains connected to interceptor• Contact information for FSE• Landlord or property manager contact information

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What to use to store your data?

• There are several FOG data management systems available

• Two examples will be introduced here• Municipalities must evaluate FOG data

management systems for applicability within their jurisdiction

• Select a system that fits the jurisdiction

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https://linkotechnology.com/ 42

LINKO FOG: “Empowering utilities to focus on what matters”

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43www.swiftcomply.com

SwiftComply: “Shared data input between stakeholders”

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Establishments, Contacts, Grease Control Devices, and Pump Outs Databases 44

Establishment Database View

Track establishments, service frequencies, and compliance status

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Data Needed

• Utility Data (partial list)• Which collection system line segments are impacted by FOG?• What is the cleaning frequency for these FOG lines?• Does the frequency exceed the established line cleaning frequency for

the normal collection system?• What is the cost per line segment to keep these FOG lines cleared?• Are there pump stations impacted by FOG?• How often are these stations cleaned?• What is the cost per cleaning?

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Stakeholder Involvement Costs

• Have you identified the stakeholders?• (More on stakeholder involvement in Module 3)

• Have meetings been scheduled to discuss the FOG Program with stakeholders?

• Has the business case been presented to the municipal leadership?• One sewer district spent one year meeting with stakeholders in monthly

meetings. Four staff members from the District were involved, three part time and one full time during this year.

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Polling Slide

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Clayton again...

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Where does the FOG go when it leaves the FSE’s

grease interceptor?

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What About Recovering Energy from Brown Grease?

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In a Report by Energy Vision Prepared by Joanna D. Underwood and Matthew P. Tomich, this Graph Shows Relative BTU Values for Organic Wastes

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Brown Grease as a Commodity

54Cubic meters of biogas production per ton of substrate

• 1998 NREL 13# FOG per person

• US POP 331 million• 2,151,500 tons of FOG

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Gresham, Oregon’s WWTP is powered by FOG and Solar and is completely off the grid

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Grease-Zilla has a Turn-key FOG-to Energy System that can be placed at any WWTP with anaerobic digesters

What is Important to Your City Leaders?

Excess costs for FOG maintenance?

Care of small businesses?

Reputation of the City or Sewer District?

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Cost-Benefit Analysis

• Existing costs to municipality if no FOG program is implemented• Cost to develop and implement FOG program• Cost to maintain a well-managed FOG program• Proposed savings due to well-managed FOG program

• Does cost for FOG Program outweigh existing costs without Program?

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Example of a Business Case Presentation

Sample Cost-Benefit Analysis 2,300 FSEs 4 New FSE/Month

Status Quo Annual FOG Program Costs Savings after 5 years,80% Cost Reduction

Item Cost Item Cost Item Cost# lineal feet /yr $180,000 Development $120,500 Line Cleaning $36,000pump station $45,000 1st Inspection $375,000 pump station $9,000Air Relief $10,000 air relief $2,000FOG Disposal $22,000 Ongoing Insp $90,000 FOG Disposal $4,400WWTP maintenance $35,000 Plan Review $6,000 WWTP maint $7,000WWTP Operations $2,800,000 Data mgmt $45,000 WWTP operation $560,000

$3,092,000 $618,400Development Cost

$495,500 Savings after year 5 $2,473,600

Maintenance Cost$141,000

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Cost-benefit Calculations Complete. What About the Rest of the Proposal?

• Topics covered in Modules 3 and 4• Program Development• Program Implementation

• Phased Approach• FOG Triage• Data Acquisition and Management

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No Surprises !All stakeholders must be kept updated on this process

City management must be kept in the loop too

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Portland’s Inspection Results over 5 years

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Wilsonville, a Case Study

2020, Wilsonville has• 99 Food Service Establishments• 99 have Grease Removal Devices

(GRD) • 99 have established pump out

schedules set by the City• The City has one full time

Pretreatment Coordinator who also has the responsibilities of handling the FOG Program

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For the following reasons the FOG program was launched in 2005

• City of Wilsonville fastest growing in the metropolitan area and

• Restaurants were applying for permits at rate of 1/month

• City FOG lines being cleaned 4 to 5 times per year

• Wastewater Treatment plant had severe foaming in the aeration basins

• Foam was blinding the ultra-violet lights used for disinfection

• Foam was passing through the final to the receiving waters

• Plant operators were washing down basins & cleaning grease from the basins daily

• Plant received slug loads of grease between midnight & 6:00 am

• City only had a voluntary program where restaurants would send in a maintenance log monthly showing if they cleaned their interceptor

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After one year…

• Operators only needed to wash down basins and clean-up grease every two weeks

• Foaming ceased completely and City experienced no further pass through or blinding of disinfection system.

• FOG Slug loads also ceased completely• FOG lines went from quarterly cleaning

to inspection every six months and cleaning if needed

• Required FSEs to contract with Preferred Pumper

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And today…

• City did NOT track monetary costs for this FOG program

• City of Wilsonville grew from 12,000 in 2005 to 23,000 today

• Plant influent BOD and TSS has not increased significantly since 2005

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Approaching Enforcement

• Broad Authority• Each application individual• Time consuming and potentially expensive• Administrative process lacking

• Situational• Re-inspection fee as needed• Cost Recovery for SSOs, Illicit discharges or Cleaning when source(s) identified• Non-conforming, illicit actions or construction• Repeated SSO, Illicit discharge, recalcitrant follow-up

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Request for FOG Program Development

Finalize Business Case for FOG Control Program

Forward Report to the Municipal Leaders or Board of Directors

Discuss and provide guidance on focused implementation strategy

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FOG Program Implementation Topics that will be Covered in

Following Web-based

Workshops

• History & Evolution of Grease Interceptors• Rating and Testing Grease Interceptors• Sizing Interceptors for Specific FSEs• Legal Authority for a FOG program• Communicating with Stakeholders• Initial Phase Implementation of FOG program• Inspections• Outreach and Training• Preferred Pumper Program• Measuring Success

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End of Module 1

Fats, Oils, Grease -Why do we Care and What is the

Cost?

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Evaluation• Thank you for attending!

• Please complete the course evaluation form• Information supports on-going training

• Information is used in justification for future grants

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www.westernstatesalliance.org

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Contacts:Clayton Brown(206) 352-2050 ext. 109cbrown@pprc.org

Ed Gilmore(206) 352-2050egilmore@pprc.org

Ken Grimm(206) 352-2050 ext. 102kgrimm@pprc.org

RAPID RESPONSE -- https://pprc.org/rapid-response/PPRC provides free and well-researched answers to specific questions about pollution prevention, with thorough and unbiased answers to inform decision making.

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Ken LoucksIW Consulting(360) 540-0570Ken@iwconsultingservice.com