Grease clog creates headache for Provincetown Surf Club owner
Though the Surf Club Restaurant isn’t known as a greasy spoon, its deck is literally held up by about 13,000 gallons of grease — and owner Lenny Enos says it needs to stay that way.
Though the Surf Club Restaurant isn’t known as a greasy spoon, its deck is literally held up by about 13,000 gallons of grease — and owner Lenny Enos says it needs to stay that way.
The restaurant’s 13,000-gallon Title V septic tank was supposed to be decommissioned or at least circumvented when the Surf Club, at 315 Commercial St., was hooked into the town’s septic system back in 2004 — but though Enos says the connection was made by a town-approved contractor and was inspected and approved by the town, it was discovered at the end of 2012 that it had been improperly done. This has caused “a continued malfunction of the town pump chamber for the municipal sewer system,” according to the health department.
“I wasn’t hooking to the sewer system to cause myself a problem. I was hooking to the sewer system to not cause myself a problem,” Enos told the board of health last week. “It was a functioning [Title V] system and then city sewerage came in.”
The town highly encouraged businesses to hook up, he said.
Grease from the Surf Club flows into a 2,500-gallon grease trap tank, from which it is supposed to be pumped at least twice a year, while liquid waste flows from it into the town pump chamber. However, because the 13,000-gallon tank wasn’t properly bypassed, grease has been flowing from the smaller tank into it. When the contractor hooked the restaurant up to town septic, the alarm system that warns when the tank is too full was deactivated. And so, without warning, the larger tank filled and overflowed into the pump chamber.
Provincetown Wastewater Plant Manager Chris Rowe said that during one of his department’s regular spot inspections, it found that grease from the restaurant has been leaking into the pump chamber. The pump chamber takes all the flow from the restaurant and pumps it into a buffer tank to the vacuum system that leads to the town sewer, Rowe said. Though the grease doesn’t necessarily clog the pumps, the floats, which measure the level of liquid waste, can get hung up in the grease and suspend pumping action.
On Nov. 26, 2013, the Provincetown Health Department sent Enos a certified 30-day Order to Correct.
“Your inaction to remedy and mitigate the persistent grease trap issues which were identified by the engineering office of William M. Rogers II have precipitated a continued malfunction of the town pump chamber for the municipal sewer system located at the rear of your property. You are hereby ordered to correct the grease trap … and to follow the explicit instructions and recommendations of … Rogers to fix the problem,” the Order to Correct reads, adding that failure to comply could result in fines and the revocation of his food service permit.