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(Salt Lake City-AP) -- Salt Lake City's sewer system has a fat problem. Homes and businesses -- particularly restaurants -- wash a lot of fatty food waste down the drain. This causes the city's sewer system to work harder.
Rather than spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new treatment plant, sewer officials started trying to get the word out about fat in the drain. A couple of years ago, they even raised business sewer rates by 50 percent to show they were serious.
That worked for a while. But in recent months, lots of fat and dairy products have been showing up in the sewer system again. Part of the problem could be that the companies that haul away fatty waste such as cooking grease raised their rates too.
City officials plan to start visiting businesses to tell workers about the problem.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
