Friday, March 29, 2024

Brewster council strengthens grease pretreatment ordinance

City honors local soldier

Posted

BREWSTER – Mayor Art Smyth opened the regular monthly meeting of the Brewster City Council last Thursday, May 18, with a proclamation honoring Army PFC John Timothy Lane on Memorial Day, May 27. Lane, a Brewster High School graduate, was killed in action in Vietnam and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest honor for covering an enemy grenade with his body to protect his fellow soldiers. A campaign has been mounted to upgrade the DSC to the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In other business, the council held a public hearing on the city’s updated Shoreline Master Plan and, receiving no public comment, passed Resolution 2-023-05 approving the plan.

Another resolution to request the five percent matching funds from the Washington State Department of Transportation for the airport taxi lane project also won approval.

“That’s what we approved at the last meeting and the bids came in today,” said Finance Director/City Clerk Misty Ruiz. “The two lowest bids were within the amount of the project.”

The city approved an ordinance to update Chapter 13.14 of the Brewster Municipal Code relating to fat, oil, and grease pretreatment facilities for businesses in the city that prepare and cook food. Director of Public Works Lee Webster said the failure to pretreat the grease, fat, and oil is causing maintenance issues at the treatment plant and requiring extra staff hours to address it.

The new ordinance strengthens requirements that the food business should already be doing.

“We’ll be going around from business to business and doing some educational stuff,” said Webster. “In every case that I’ve seen it’s just a lack of proper maintenance,”

“And before they are allowed to open, they have what they need,” added Ruiz about the food preparation stores. “They just need to understand what they need to do to operate the equipment.”

The city received one bid for ice pigging from American Pipeline Solutions that came in within the budgeted amount and the council awarded the bid. Ice pigging is a waterline cleaning process that utilizes slush ice or slurry that is forced through a pipe and cleans it. The project will cost about $340,000 and will treat all city water lines south of Highway 97. It will be funded by federal dollars.

Webster thinks the process will make a major improvement to manganese in the system.


 

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here