Las Cruces shoots to keep its sewers fat-free

Do you dump hot grease down your drain? Stop! The preferred disposal method is pouring hot grease into a can where it can cool, then adding the cooled can to your household trash.

Fats, oils and greases can clog up sewer lines, just like they can clog up your arteries. A common cause of overflows is sewer pipes eventually being blocked by grease you pour down your kitchen sink. When the hot grease cools, it solidifies and sticks to the insides of sewer pipes - both on your property, and in the streets. Over time, the grease can buildup and block the entire pipe, causing:

•Raw sewage overflows in your home or a neighbor's home.

•Expensive and unpleasant cleanup of your home.

•Raw sewage overflowing into parks, yards, and streets.

•Potential contact with disease-causing organisms.

•An increase in operation and maintenance costs for local sewer departments, causing higher sewer bills for customers.

Grease, oils and fats include meat fats, lard, cooking oil, shortening, butter and margarine, food scraps, sauces and dairy products. Home garbage disposals do not keep grease out of the plumbing system, they simply shred solid material - vegetable and fruit trimmings, generally - into smaller pieces. Commercial additives, including detergents that claim to dissolve grease, may pass grease down the line and cause problems in other areas.

The grease that ends up in wastewater coming from your home or business travels through almost 500

miles of sewer lines and through 15 lift stations before arriving at the Jacob A. Hands Wastewater Treatment Facility or the East Mesa Water Reclamation Facility on West Amador Avenue. That's where almost 3 billion gallons of sewage, from Las Cruces homes and businesses, is treated every year. The plant and the many miles of sewer pipe are managed and operated by the Water Resources Section of Las Cruces Utilities. One of the jobs of the treatment plant is to remove the grease and fats that separate and accumulate on top of the wastewater.

The grease and fats are removed by the facilities' skimmer equipment (pictured) and then sent through to our anaerobic digesters. This process is critical. If grease and fats are not removed from the wastewater, the entire process is negatively affected by allowing Filamentous bacteria to thrive, which would ultimately not allow for waste to be properly removed.

The filtered, treated and cleaned water coming out of Las Cruces Utilities treatment plants is high quality effluent that meets or exceeds all EPA and NMED standards for surface water and ground water, before being discharged into the Rio Grande basin, local parks and a golf course. The water in the river is then pulled out downstream where it is further filtered and cleaned, and used as drinking water for other communities.

You can reach Las Cruces Utilities at (575) 528-3511 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday. Utilities Connection is submitted by Suzanne Michaels, Education and Public Outreach for Las Cruces Utilities: Water-Gas-Wastewater-Solid Waste services for almost 100,000 Las Cruces residents.