Clay Sellers: Got questions about the Brazos. No more unknowns. Ever wonder where that water comes from or where it goes? We're Unpacking the Brazos River.
Charlie Shugart: Brown Friday is coming during a time when many will be participating in Black Friday or prepped for Cyber Monday, and it's disgusting. Now, Brown Friday refers to the day after Thanksgiving, but you should know, even if it doesn't have a designated title, what causes that name is also a popular occurrence after Christmas, New Year's, or can even sneak up on a random Tuesday. But let's back up.
It's the height of the holiday season. For many, your kitchen looks bustling, filled with incredible smells or slow-cooked magic, buttery goodness, and maybe a deep-fried something or other.
Whether you're hosting a big clan or just a few chosen favorites, kitchen counters are probably swimming in pots and platters. In between all of that, or maybe afterward, if you're like my household, those who don't cook, clean. In this happy, sometimes stressful chaos, it's easy to deal with the leftover oil, butter, food that's on these plates, and the old down the drain goodbye. But then, while the feast is wrapped up upstairs, a silent, slow-motion disaster begins underground. The name Brown Friday is the result of being one of the busiest days of the year for plumbers due to the surge in calls related to clogged drains and broken garbage disposals.
Now I know what you're thinking. You've hosted Thanksgiving for the past five years, and you've never had an issue. Or you're thinking, who doesn't know that after you roast, smoke, or deep fry a turkey, the grease doesn't go down the drain? Stick with me here because what you're doing is going to affect more than just your sink. Your pocketbook could be affected, and you could create problems for Mother Earth.
This is Unpacking the Brazos River. I'm Charlie Shugart, and I'm with the BRA's Public Information Office. And today, we're talking about FOG. Joining me again today is the BRA's Public Information Coordinator, Candice Sheridan. Candice, it's terrific to have you back to talk about this messy subject.
Candice Sheridan: Thanks for having me. I love this topic.
Charlie Shugart: And we're also very fortunate to be joined by Troy Zwerneman, the BRA's regional operations programs coordinator.
Troy Zwerneman: That's a mouthful. It's a pleasure to be here, though. I hope I can provide some insight.
Charlie Shugart: Absolutely. We're excited.
Candice Sheridan: We’re counting on it.
Charlie Shugart: Okay. So, tell us a little bit about your history with the BRA and what it is that you do.
Troy Zwerneman: Sure. What I do for the BRA is industrial pretreatment programs for some of our contract customers, and also take care of the stormwater permits and reporting for all of our wastewater facilities, and reporting to the state. I started about eight years ago working in a department of two people managing industrial pretreatment for the cities of Temple and Belton, and what we do is we look at industrial contributions to the wastewater system. So, think chrome plating, pet food manufacturing, or something like that. Those guys have wastewater discharges that need to be regulated and permitted.
It is an interesting, interesting sector. It's kind of niche. Not everybody has it.
Charlie Shugart: It is interesting. So we're here today to discuss FOG. So, what is that? Obviously, we're not here to talk well, not maybe not obviously. We're not here to talk about the weather. So, when we say FOG, what are we talking about?
Troy Zwerneman: Yeah. In the sewer business, FOG is fats, oils, and grease. Fats are your butter, shortening, margarine, meat trimmings, dairy, and even peanut butter. Oils, those are pretty self-explanatory, vegetable and cooking oils, but also salad dressings.
Charlie Shugart: Oh, salad dressing isn’t one that I would have thought of.
Troy Zwerneman: Yeah. And then your grease, things like gravy, mayonnaise, and rendered meat fat. Fats are solid at room temperature, oils are liquid at room temperature, and then greases are liquid when warm, and then solid when cool.
Candice Sheridan: So, when we've got all those things left over, you know, on our plates, cleaning up a meal, whether it's a holiday or whatever, why should I care if I just wash it down the disposal? The disposal's gonna take care of that. Why should I care about what happens after it's gone?
Troy Zwerneman: Yeah. The disposal is my best friend at times, too, but I really try to limit the use of the disposal. When you wash fats and oils and greases down the sink, they accumulate in your pipes. They'll stick to the walls of the pipe and build up just like you've always heard from your doctor, plaque and fat in your arteries. They'll build up on the walls, and they'll catch things on their way down, things that are not fats or oils, but things that you've sent down the disposal, and over time, that buildup will cause a clog or result in a leak or an overflow somewhere else.
Charlie Shugart: So obviously, we are talking about this as we're leading up to Thanksgiving.
Troy Zwerneman: Oh, yeah. The cities will see clogs, I mean, really any time throughout the year, because their pipe system, their sewer system, is so much larger. I think you're referring to Brown Friday probably being a more residential holiday for the plumbers.
Charlie Shugart: That makes sense.
Troy Zwerneman: Just smaller diameter piping systems, and a lot more people putting stress on those systems as well. It's likely a household sink and sewer system that's made for four or five people, where on a Thanksgiving Thursday, you might have 20 people putting things down the disposal or washing their dishes.
Charlie Shugart: Is there something in particular about the fats, oils, and grease that makes them clog or stick to the side?
Troy Zwerneman: Honestly, there's probably some chemistry or biology to it, but I just know that that stuff tends to stick to the pipes. I mean, it sticks to anything you put it on. One of the benefits of the material itself is also a detriment when it gets into your pipes.
Charlie Shugart: Yeah, I like that.
Candice Sheridan: They taste so good.
Troy Zwerneman: They can still taste good, just don't wash them down the sink.
Candice Sheridan: So smart.
Charlie Shugart: So, I know a lot of times you think if you run enough like hot water or maybe if you pour dish soap down the drain, would that help the fats, oils, and grease move?
Troy Zwerneman: Sure, it'll get it into the system and keep it liquid or moving just enough to create a clog further downstream. I know what you mean. When I've got grease or oil on my hands, I use Dawn dish soap to wash it off, and it works great, but then it separates somewhere in the sewer system and sticks to the pipes and builds up, like we're discussing.
Charlie Shugart: So, it ends up becoming somebody else's problem?
Troy Zwerneman: Somebody else's problem if you're on a sewer system, or it could be your own problem if you're on a septic system. It could end up being your problem, you're just building it up over time.
Charlie Shugart: Yeah, that makes sense.
Troy Zwerneman: Really, what I think about with fats, oils, and grease being a problem is the pipe cloggings. They call them fatbergs. Just a massive iceberg of fat in a sewer system.
Troy Zwerneman: You can Google fatberg and see more disgusting photos than you would care to about
Charlie Shugart: I'm a 100% going to do that.
Troy Zwerneman: What fat in a sewer system looks like. There are some really large-scale sort of case studies, if you will, in big cities, especially.
Candice Sheridan: I’m sitting here with a disgusted look on my face. Very good description, though.
Troy Zwerneman: Getting it through the system is really where it kinda wreaks its havoc by clogging pipes or gunking up lift station pumps.
Charlie Shugart: What's a lift station pump?
Troy Zwerneman: Lift stations, for those not familiar, are traditionally, maybe not traditionally these days, but sewer lines are gravity fed. Of course, cities don't always slope downhill. Wastewater plants aren't always at the bottom of the hill, so city designers and engineers install lift stations to serve new areas and to push wastewater ultimately to the plant.
Charlie Shugart: Okay. This is kinda silly. So it's kinda like an elevator?
Troy Zwerneman: An elevator for wastewater, for sewage.
Candice Sheridan: You're telling me don't wash it down the sink. What do I do with it?
Troy Zwerneman: Sure. Put as much in your regular garbage as you can. Scrape off your plates into your garbage. Even the runny or liquid stuff, even the gravy, even the salad dressing, wipe that off into your trash if you can. You want as little of that going down the sink as possible.
And I know that nobody wants to pour liquids into their kitchen garbage can because then you'll get a hole in it and drag it all through the kitchen on your way out the door. But if you can, put it into a container, a secondary container that then goes into the trash as well.
Charlie Shugart: My grandmother used to have, like, a container that sat behind, like, the stove for, like, the grease that after meals would pour into it.
Candice Sheridan: And that's one thing, but then they reused that grease, and so, that's, I mean, that's what my grandma used to do.
Troy Zwerneman: I grew up with a grease can in the house too, that
Candice Sheridan: and reusing it?
Troy Zwerneman: that's commonplace. No, not reusing. No, not that I was aware of.
Charlie Shugart: That's just you, Candice.
Candice Sheridan: You'd be surprised. I bet there are some listeners out there who're like, yeah, my grandma used to do that too.
Troy Zwerneman: Like I said, when I grew up, my mom had a grease jar on the counter. When she would make bacon, she would pour the grease into the jar, and then once it cools off and solidifies, chuck it in the trash. So, they knew what to do way back then. It's somewhere along the lines, we've lost that, or we've decided that it's not our problem, but it is everybody's problem, part of the community.
Charlie Shugart: You know, there's always this it could never happen to me mentality that, you know, people have for different scenarios. But
Troy Zwerneman: Instances such as Thanksgiving, when you have a lot of people putting a lot of stuff down the drain, that can make it happen quicker. If there is a buildup of fat or grease in the sewer lines, that's sticky, and it will catch all kinds of things: coffee grounds, wipes. I know we weren't here to talk about wipes, but that's another big, big issue with sewer systems. And the fat will catch onto the wipes and just exacerbate the problem. There's no such thing as flushable wipes.
Charlie Shugart: Since we own the expert, why is that?
Troy Zwerneman: I think about it like if you're gonna use toilet paper, it needs to be dry, right? Once you get toilet paper wet, it just disintegrates in your hand. So anything that doesn't disintegrate when it's wet, it's not gonna disintegrate in the sewer either, and it's gonna clog the lift station pumps again, it's gonna catch on to fat buildup and make clogs happen faster. And when clogs happen in a sewer system, they create sewer overflows in the low points of the city, or the low points of the collection system, and that's raw sewage overflowing into public spaces, into neighborhoods or parks, and nobody wants that.
Candice Sheridan: I do like that description, like, disintegration. Because people will say everything's flushable.
Troy Zwerneman: Even napkins or paper towels, you can get them damp and they're still usable. So, you don't want that going down your drain because it also won't dissolve in your drain. I think the big problems that municipalities see are wipes. Wipes are a really big one. FOG that we're talking about today.
Pharmaceuticals also. Pharmaceuticals may not clog your pipes and they may dissolve in the water, but they are not well treated by our wastewater treatment plants, and can lead to pharmaceutical, chemicals and compounds getting back into the environment where we don't want them. So definitely dispose of your pharmaceuticals in a responsible way, take them back to your pharmacy or doctor's office. They usually have old prescription pickups.
Charlie Shugart: I saw on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's website that communities spend billions of dollars every year on clogging or replacing grease-blocked pipes, repairing pump stations, and cleaning up costly and illegal wastewater spills. Basically, the stuff you are scraping off your plates to clean them in the sink can eventually affect your pocketbook in a sense because if you're messing up the pipes for everybody, then everybody's gonna maybe then also end up footing the bill for that.
Troy Zwerneman: Yeah. For sure. You might think that if you don't have a septic system, if you're on a city sewer, then if you can get the grease away from your house, then it'll be alright. But then they might have a blockage just down your street where they have to close the road for a week to clear a fatberg, like we talked about, and then your rates will your sewer rates will go up next year.
Candice Sheridan: And I guess what we will see sometimes or hear from people is, my one little house is not gonna be a problem. I'll just do it. It's so small. It's just, you know, a minuscule portion, but what we try to preach is that every single person did it, then it just multiplies the problem.
Troy Zwerneman: I think that's a great point. Every person with a little bit of impact creates a big impact overall in a community. And it's a problem for residential sewer lines and wastewaters, but it's also a problem for commercial kitchens. And there are a lot more regulations, and usually that's in city ordinances regulating the installation of grease interceptors at commercial kitchens.
Charlie Shugart: We didn't really touch on this too much, but can you go into a little bit the BRA's role in wastewater treatment? Like, why is the Brazos River Authority talking about wastewater?
Troy Zwerneman: Yeah. Everybody knows the water cycle from third grade or fourth grade, but waters on the surface evaporate, it goes into clouds, and then it rains back into the rivers and lakes. But our water cycle is water gets consumed and used, and then the leftover is wastewater, and it goes into the sewer system and the pipes. And the BRA operates and maintains, I think it's nine wastewater treatment facilities right now, where we clean and treat that wastewater, pull out all the disgusting stuff and the harmful stuff, and then we put it back into the streams, into the rivers. Clean water at that point. A lot of times, the water coming out of our wastewater plants is cleaner than the water that's there in the river already.
Charlie Shugart: I wanna just restate that for everybody who didn't hear it because you guys are stuck at the gross part. But a lot of times, the water being put back into our streams and rivers is cleaner than what is in there already.
Troy Zwerneman: Absolutely. You could go to the outfall, that's where our wastewater effluent goes into the stream, and a lot of times, there's more fish and flora and fauna critters running around at our outfall than there are at other points in the stream.
Charlie Shugart: Do you have a favorite food at Thanksgiving?
Troy Zwerneman: I know it's probably a popular one, but green bean casserole, and I'll wipe my plate off into the trash when I'm done with it, but I'll enjoy it the whole time.
Candice Sheridan: Right, because it's got all that creamy goodness.
Troy Zwerneman: Whatever is good tasting is bad for the sink and the tray.
Charlie Shugart: That's perfect.
Troy Zwerneman: It's bad for bad for you as well. Right? Butter, gravy.
Charlie Shugart: Candice, do you have a favorite thing at Thanksgiving?
Candice Sheridan: My mom's mashed potatoes. Lots of butter, lots of cream, and there is no scrap on my plate after that. I don't have to wipe anything, wash anything, and there's no scraps.
Charlie Shugart: You're licking it up?
Candice Sheridan: I'm licking it clean and then putting it back on the shelf.
Charlie Shugart: Okay. So, we are really fortunate that we've got someone who can jump on the call with us to tell us a little bit more about what it's like to deal with FOG at the wastewater treatment plant.
Nate Wilde: Hello. I'm Nate Wilde. I'm with the BRA down here at the Temple-Belton plant. I have actually just got a promotion to the regional wastewater operations superintendent.
Charlie Shugart: Hey. Congratulations. That's great.
Nate Wilde: I've been the chief operator here at the Temple-Belton and Dozier Farms facilities for the last four and a half years. And before that, I've been with the BRA, April will be eighteen years, so it's about seventeen and a half or so years I've been with the BRA. Started in the compost area and moved into operations, and into lead operator, and then chief operator, and now the regional wastewater operations superintendent. So, I've been here a while.
Anyway, currently treating, you know, about 10 to 12,000,000 gallons a day of wastewater between the Temple-Belton plant and the Dozier Farms facility. You know, I guess we're here today to talk about FOG and some of the stuff we've seen over the years. You know, the FOG is a huge issue in the lift stations. We have just around 40 lift stations that we run for the city of Temple. FOG's a huge concern there because the grease will build up, and it and it builds up on top of the lift stations.
And as the level rises, that grease will form like a basically, like a hard surface on there, and it'll raise up, and it'll cause floats to not trip or to trip and get air it up. And it can cause overflows and backflows. But it's a huge issue at the lift stations with the floats and the problems, you know, build up in them with the grease. Once the FOG gets to the lift stations, if it processes through the lift stations, it gets into the facilities. There we have trouble, you know, trouble.
It comes into some screens to remove, and it can bind the screens over, and then removal of it is kinda nasty. It's almost impossible to remove it all. Your microorganisms have to work to break down the waste, the organics and stuff, the pollutants in the wastewater, the ammonias, and BOD, and stuff like that in the wastewater. And if the grease is in there, it also has to break it down. So instead of the microorganisms functioning to break down the main pollutants that we worry about. They have to focus on the grease before they get into other pollutants, which, you know, just adds more loading and more to the process for them breaking down. Another big issue with the grease or the FOG is that it helps create sulfides in the collection system and at the facility, which basically causes most of the odors. Here at the facility, if we have too much odors, we get some complaints.
Charlie Shugart: How's that work? Are you able to actually do anything about the smell?
Nate Wilde: One facility we have, we have an odor control system that we have in place. It's basically a biological filter inside the deal, and we pull a vacuum off of our headwork structure and then run it through this biological filter to try to remove the sulfides and the h two s in in the air. And it helps a lot, but it's hard to keep it completely sealed up. You know, it's hard to encapsulate trap it all. You know, some still seeps out and stuff like that.
But when TCEQ, they get a complaint like that, an odor complaint, basically, they come out. They realize it's a wastewater treatment plant. They're not necessarily coming out to say, hey. Your plant stinks. Make it smell better. And they're just coming out to check that we are doing everything we can to, you know, to keep that from becoming an issue.
Charlie Shugart: Yeah. That makes sense. Now I hear FOG issues aren't the only thing that kind of makes its way over to the treatment plant. What else have you seen make it there that wasn't supposed to be there?
Nate Wilde: We pulled a 14-inch car tire out of a pump before. The guys have pulled four by fours. You know, they had one wedged in the deals. It's probably almost six foot long one time. They'd remove all kind of piping to get it out. I know one time I opened up one of our screens here at the plant. We have fire screens that separate the trash and open it up, and there was one of those about a three-and-a-half- to four-foot-tall safety cones, a highway cone standing up inside the screen. It's like, how the heck did that get through? You know, it had to pass through several pumps to get. I don't know how it made it through, but it has.
You know, we had an issue where we kinda found some construction sites. They had something open to a manhole or something else, and we had a situation where we had almost a whole trailer load of gravel come through a lift station. We ended up having to get down in a lift station and, you know, use back trucks to clean it completely out and stuff. It was basically full plumb up with gravel. You know, we've seen all kinds of stuff come through that's not supposed to be in there.
We've had hay bale twine. One of the major things we're seeing now is sanitary wipes —the flushable wipes they call them. Well, those aren't flushable. They need to be as far from the toilet as possible because they have been a nightmare at the lift stations and stuff, like I said, because they really form into these rags and they don't, you know, break apart and disappear like regular toilet paper or something would.
Charlie Shugart: What? That's crazy. I can't believe how much stuff makes it through that. Obviously, this stuff isn't coming down the sink. Is it just a result of manhole covers being open, or?
Nate Wilde: Yeah. Some, but it's amazing what they can get flushed down, you know, undergarments, shirts. I mean, we've seen all kinds of stuff, like if it gets out of your house to the street, it's gone, you know, on your end, but it comes on down. And I don't know if it's, you know, lack of education or just lack of care, you know, what comes down if some of those guys have to come clean out some of these life stations sometime they would probably learn not to do it anymore.
That's the same with these flushable wipes and stuff. Like I said, if anybody had to deal with some of that, they would probably learn pretty quick that it's not a good idea to do.
Charlie Shugart: This has been great information. I feel like it paints a really good picture of what y'all deal with there at the wastewater treatment plants.
Nate Wilde: Yeah. It's definitely amazing what that grease can do. You know, certain times of the year, it's worse, definitely, in the winter it coagulates more, and it is just a bigger problem. But like I said, we see it throughout the facility, and it does wreak havoc on the wastewater system and the, you know, collection systems all the way to the lift stations and into the facility.
Charlie Shugart: Thank you so much for jumping on this call with us. I feel like this was just a really helpful addition to help kinda explain to everybody the impact that allowing FOG to go down the drain really has on these wastewater treatment plants. Okay. So, Troy, what is a big key takeaway that you want people to remember when they think about FOG?
Troy Zwerneman: I think I would want people to know that it's not just about the grease and the fat and the oil, but it's about any kind of other solid particles that you'll send down the drain because the fat and the grease will catch that stuff. So just because your disposal can handle it, doesn't mean it should go down the train.
Candice Sheridan: But you said something today that I didn't think of, and that was coffee grounds. I will put mine in the trash from now on.
Charlie Shugart: It feels simple and, like, it kinda makes common sense once you, like, hear you explain it, and, like, the problems that it causes. I think the problem is just a lot of people just don't know that that's something that they shouldn't be doing. Maybe they grew up in households where you just put everything down the sink, or, you know, their friends do it, or anything like that, and it is just a matter of people not maybe really understanding the impact that it has.
Candice Sheridan: Absolutely. I agree.
Troy Zwerneman: Just because it can go down the drain doesn't mean it should. Just because it's flushable doesn't mean you should flush it. It costs a lot of money to have a plumber come out and just tell you what the problem is, and then it costs a lot more money for them to come back out and fix it. And on a holiday weekend when it's important to be able to flush your toilet and for it to go away, it's a pretty penny to get that resolved. So take care of your pipes throughout the year so that maybe those few family members who aren't gonna listen to our advice and do send something down the drain, it won't cause a backup or an overflow in your home.
Candice Sheridan: Perfect. I've learned something today.
Charlie Shugart: Absolutely. Well, Candice, Troy, thanks for joining us today.
Troy Zwerneman: Happy to be here.
Candice Sheridan: It was fun. Thanks.
Charlie Shugart: If, while listening to this episode, you have any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out. We can flush out those lingering questions. You can email us at information@brazas.org. But more importantly, if you were the person who brought up this subject of grease backups into the home from flushing the wrong thing while your family was passing the mashed potatoes, we definitely need to hear that story. Again, our email is information@Brazos.org.
Now go host your people, feed your friends, and enjoy. Just don't forget it's incredibly easier and less financially painful to take those extra steps to dispose of FOG correctly than to deal with that gross, costly backup during the holidays. Thanks for listening to Unpacking the Brazos River. See you next time.