Cave Creek relaxes restaurant regulations
by Kathleen Stinson

CAVE CREEK – Under pressure from some Cave Creek restaurant owners, town officials are loosening up on a new grease discharge requirement the town was about to impose on those businesses.          

Despite that change, restaurant owners will now be required to pay a monthly fee which some say is making it harder to do business here.

“They (Cave Creek) want to be known as a town that is a restaurant destination, but the added fees are making it tougher to make a living in this business,” said Jeff Price, owner of  The Horny Toad restaurant. “If the town didn’t get sales tax from its 28 restaurants, they wouldn’t have much (money) to work with.”

Town engineer Wayne Anderson, area restauranteurs and Maricopa County Department of  Environmental Services engineers met late last month to discuss the old and new grease discharge requirements.

Grease and other suspended solids from dining establishments put a financial and physical strain on the town’s sewer system, officials have said.

In an effort to abate that burden, Cave Creek was about to require that all restaurants purchase and install a device to measure the amount of grease they discharge. The device, known as a sampling port, would have cost each establishment between $6,000 to $8,000.

Instead, the town will require  restaurants to purchase and install a simpler, less expensive sampling device estimated to cost about $1,000 or less. However, the town intends to charge restaurants $80 per month to collect and test samples from those devices.

“The town finally got off its horse and decided to work with us,” Price said, adding, “The other thing (sampling port) is a big vault that would have cost us all a fortune.”

According to Price, the restaurant owners  “feel a lot better” about the new equipment requirement.

The less expensive device, made of PVC pipe, does not remove grease from discharged water but collects samples for testing. By monitoring the discharge of grease and suspended solids, the town can identify any restaurants that may not be in compliance with the town’s solids limits and fine owners that are not complying with those limits.  

Cave Creek’s grease discharge limit is 350 milligrams of total suspended solids per liter of water.

Those limits are  not unusually stringent, said Bill Kenning, civil engineer for the county’s Environmental Services department.

Grease can solidify in the pipeline causing a blockage that can shut down businesses operating on the line or back up into restaurant pipes, Kenning said, adding Cave Creek’s limit is comparable to other municipalities.

Price said he is not happy the town now intends to charge a monthly testing fee.

“It’s a real crock the town is even charging us to test us,” The Horny Toad’s owner said.

Restaurants may do their own grease testing and submit the results to the town to avoid the monthly charge. But, according to Price, it is not practicable for restaurants to do their own

sampling because the sample has to be taken to Phoenix for testing.

Dining establishments, which are required to have grease traps, must also have those traps cleaned periodically–monthly or bimonthly, depending on the size of the trap.

Price said it costs him $350 a month to have his restaurant’s grease trap cleaned out. His sewer bill is another expense. He paid Cave Creek $332.10 for sewer service in July–and July is a slow business month.             

Jim Thompson, co‑owner of the Dairy Queen in Cave Creek, said he has his grease traps cleaned out twice a month at a cost of $100 per pumping.

“We’ve tried to cut down on as much grease as possible,” Thompson said, explaining that he doesn’t wash dishes on site but uses paper plates that are disposed of through trash removal.

“I understand the town has its back up against the wall,” Thompson said. “(But) I don’t think that treatment plant is adequate to handle 28 restaurants, and they’re talking about adding more restaurants.”

Anderson noted that Cave Creek will build a new wastewater treatment plant in the next few years. The new location will be on the north side of Carefree Highway, east of Cave Creek Wash.

Reach the reporter at kathleen@thedesertadvocate.com.