City Ordinance or Code Language for Safe Placement of Grease Traps

In Ann Arbor, Michigan we are finding that more and more restaurant-type businesses are locating their above-ground grease trap tanks inside the trash corrals, in front of the trash dumpsters, recycling and compost carts. This placement, is creating unsafe situation for our service drivers when accessing the recycling and compost carts when doing their job, as well as creating unsanitary problems for the business owners and tenants who share the corral in larger mall locations.

There presently is non existent city ordinance or code language in the City of Ann Arbor to deal with above-ground grease tanks in shared trash corrals of businesses.

We are looking for any example city ordinance or city code language that could help us resolve this present situation, making it safer and cleaner for everyone entering these corrals.

Such things we would consider, would be; creating a separate grease tank stall (corral) to keep such devices separated from the trash corral containers, requirement of restaurant businesses to use underground grease tanks (interceptors) rather than above-ground grease tanks or anything else that other cities have tackled and written to deal with such devices and the situations that they pose.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Lisa Perschke
Recycle Program Specialist
Recycle Ann Arbor
United States
www.recycleannarbor.org