(Newswire.net — August 28, 2018) –A 50 year old man was arrested on Tuesday after he confessed to the police that he was responsible for dumping over 10,000 pounds of used cooking oil in a vacant lot in Davenport, Florida. The result was a huge mess that accumulated in the empty lot near Sand Mine Road and U.S. Highway 27. According to county authorities and ACT Environmental, the company which assisted with the cleanup, the spill was the largest ever recorded in Polk County.
Polk County Fire Rescue/Hazmat, ACT Environmental, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Hazmat Teams responded to the disaster. According to Polk County Sheriff, Grady Judd, Hazmat tested the sludge and determined it was not hazardous to the public.
Investigators traced the spill back to a pump truck that was discovered in close proximity to the scene. Agricultural Crimes detectives arrested the truck operator, Peter Rodriguez, charging him with two counts of commercial dumping.
Rodriguez admitted that he dumped the oil but explained that he was forced to do it, otherwise he claimed that he would have lost his job working for Brownies Septic and Plumbing. The company is, however, strongly denying this claim. Company representatives explained that the used cooking oil is regularly picked up and disposed of in Orlando, Florida where it is later sold and used for other purposes. As such, there was no reason for Rodriguez to dump it in the lot.
Rodriguez has been released from jail on a $2,000 bond.
Animal fats and vegetable oils are regulated under 40 CFR 112 as these oils can be highly detrimental to the environment in a very similar way as petroleum oils. Oil can coat, smother and kill animals and plants; form toxic byproducts; destroy food supplies, aquatic life, wildlife habitats and breeding grounds; emit putrid smells, be flammable and contaminate water supplies, among other devastating effects.
Additionally, when animal fats and oils inevitably drip into the pipes and sewage lines, huge plumbing problems can result. When the oil mixes with the sewage water it can contribute to giant blobs consisting of wastewater, leftover grease, debris, and chemicals and biological components that consolidate below ground in city sewers. The resulting congealed buildup, called a fatberg, continues to grow and can eventually result in a large scale failure of a city’s sewage system. The situation and the resulting damage is highly exacerbated when it includes large amounts of oil.
Miranda Home Services, experienced with identifying and fixing all types of clogs and plumbing problems, stresses that it takes a qualified technician to find the source of the problem and correct it as hard to locate areas where drain stoppages can frequently occur are in the fixture trap, in the main drain, in the sharp bends and direction changes of the sub pipelines, and deep in the sewer line. According to a recent review of the subject, fatbergs are believed to be the cause of about 47% of the approximately 36,000 sewer overflows that occur annually in the U.S.