City Approves Funding for Grease-to-Energy Facility

The City Council approved spending up to $850,000 to install the equipment necessary to intercept all the fats, oils, and greases that would otherwise get dumped down the city’s collective drains — or shipped to repositories in faraway places like Bakersfield or Fresno. The money will be used to build a facility at the city’s El Estero Wastewater Treatment Plant to remove the fatty substances from the plant’s digester units. After that, they will be used to produce biogases that can be burned and transformed into electricity. By eliminating trips to the various fat recovery sites throughout the state, up to 240 tons of CO2 emissions can be avoided a year. Funding comes courtesy of a low-interest loan provided by the California Clean Water State Revolving Fund.