PITTSFORD, N.Y. — The Village of Pittsford is taking the first steps to require restaurants to install grease traps after a viral video showed a Burger King employee in Greece pouring cooking grease down a drain a few months ago.

News10NBC’s Tom Kowalski spoke with village leaders and found there is no law on the books at the federal, state, county, town or village level that explicitly requires every restaurant to have a grease trap. There are laws that say grease traps must have covers and signs and restaurants cannot pour grease down sewers, but no specific law mandates restaurants must have them.

“We’re spending a number of man hours with our Department of Public Works crew cleaning out the basin,” Pittsford Village Mayor Alyssa Plummer said.

Plummer said the potential new law aims to cut off grease buildups in the village sewers at the source. Village leaders said the move would save costs on manpower and infrastructure.

“For us it’s really more, not so much hard dollars per se as the number of hours it would take to devote a crew to cleaning out the basin area when they could be working on another project,” Plummer said.

If approved, each of Pittsford’s restaurants would be required to buy their own grease trap, also known as a grease interceptor. The traps can cost anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars.

“Obviously it’s environmentally not a good thing to do at all. And every business should have that responsibility of taking care of any kind of waste like that, that they have generated…you know, not to get too graphic, but if there’s, you know, a lot of clogs, it’s going to back up the whole system, you know…we’d rather be proactive than reactive I think is really, you know, what’s generating this sort of thought process,” Plummer said.

If business owners do not comply, the village will hold them accountable for the cost to clear or repair the clog. Plummer said the village is concerned about what enters its infrastructure because all businesses are using the same system.

The village is set to have a public hearing regarding the grease traps on July 14. The DEC said if grease enters the sewers and waterways, it risks hurting local wildlife. In New York City, grease buildups cost about $18 million a year to clear.

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