Richmond’s Grease Trap Rules: a Number, Not a Calendar

The standard: what leaves your pipe

City code Sec. 28-907 writes the limits into every wastewater service contract: nothing over 100 parts per million of fat, oil or grease by weight, nothing hotter than 150°F, and no solids or viscous matter that could obstruct the sewers (echoed in the enforcement article at Sec. 28-1329). Separately, the DPU Pretreatment Program’s local limits set 300 mg/L total oil and grease as the daily maximum for permitted industrial users — a different, permit-based track most restaurants aren’t on. The practical point of both: compliance is measured at the discharge, any day, not certified by a calendar.

The powers: what the city can do about it

• Prescribe your equipment. The city sets the “character and capacity” of required grease facilities — and every cost of installing, maintaining, cleaning and operating them is the business’s (Sec. 28-907(2)).
• Demand access. Equipment must be “readily and easily accessible for observation, maintenance, operation, sampling, cleaning and inspection” — blocked lids are themselves a problem.
• Inspect at any time (Sec. 28-907(5)).
• Bill you for failure. Don’t maintain or clean properly and the city may charge you what it costs them to treat your discharge.
• Turn off the water’s exit. Violations are “sufficient cause to discontinue such services” — the shortest sentence in the section and the one that closes restaurants.

Spills have a clock

An accidental release or slug load must be reported to the city’s Pretreatment Program immediately — within 24 hours of a known release, at (804) 646-3000, with a written report within 5 business days. If a trap overflow ever reaches a drain in volume, that call is part of the cleanup.

So how do you comply with a number you can’t see?

You can’t watch ppm. What you can control is the machine that produces it: a trap or interceptor with working volume left. That’s why the practical Richmond standard is an interval sized to your kitchen — industry practice plans pump-outs at about 25% accumulation, comfortably before separation fails — plus full evacuations so the schedule means what it says, plus receipts and manifests so that when the city exercises its any-time inspection right, your file answers before your trap has to. Size your interval here; keep every receipt.