All of this backed-up grease jamming the city’s arteries is taking a heavy toll on the heart of its century-old sewer system, which is nearly at the end of its expected life span. In 2006, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) estimated that it received about seven calls a minute due to complaints about fat-clogged sewer lines. The agency says that the city has been spending about $3.5 million a year to clean up sewers blocked by oily wastes illegally or irresponsibly dumped by commercial and residential kitchens. Additional “hidden” costs include lost business (such as when a restaurant can’t operate because of a sewer backup), and expenses to the city’s Health Department, including the rather grim possibility that it will boost the rat population by giving them a food supply. Another problem: in San Francisco, unlike other cities around the bay, storm water and sewage share the same piping. These grease-constricted sewer lines are apt to overflow during winter storms.

Can this organic waste problem actually be a solution to the city’s insatiable need for renewable, clean sources of energy? The PUC thinks so. Its new SFGreasecycle program aims to prevent grease from entering the sewer system in the first place, instead turning it into biofuel. Karri Ving, coordinator of the program, puts it this way: “The best solution is to stop pollution at its source.”

To this end, SFGreasecycle offers restaurants, hotels and schools with large kitchens free collection of waste vegetable oil. The program provides 55-gallon collection drums for high-volume kitchens and encourages the smaller ones to reuse the five-gallon containers the oil originally comes in. SFGreasecycle educates kitchen staff about how to avoid mixing food scraps or water into the waste oil, and about why it’s wiser to use pure vegetable oils than partially hydrogenated ones. (The program may be expanded to collect the waste that winds up in restaurants’ grease traps, which usually contains more animal fats.)

Currently, the program dispatches trucks to pick up vegetable oil and tote it to a transfer facility at the city’s southeast sewage treatment plant. There, the waste oil is filtered and shipped to one of four companies for conversion into biodiesel. SFGreasecycle is also responsible for storing the biodiesel, which will be used to fuel city vehicles.

The program fits neatly with some of the city’s larger environmental goals, including reducing the city fleet’s reliance on petroleum, promoting green practices, and preventing social inequities like allowing waste to be offloaded to landfills in disadvantaged communities. “The only drawback to this program is that we should have been responsibly doing it fifty years ago,” says Ving, who credits “really strong mandates from the top” for pushing it forward.

Specifically, she means directives from Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ordered that by the end of 2007 all city-owned diesel vehicles would be running on a mixture called B20, which contains at least twenty percent biodiesel. The city met that goal and is now required to increase the percentage of biodiesel used, ideally to 100 percent. Currently, most of the city’s biofuel is supplied by San Francisco Petroleum. Although the company is required to buy preferentially from local sustainable biodiesel companies when it can, there’s just not much nearby supply. Instead, San Francisco Petroleum largely produces its biofuel from virgin vegetable oil transported from the Midwest.

Ving hopes this will change in mid-2009, when the city’s three-year master fueling contract is up for renewal. The SFPUC’s new contract is expected to include more stringent requirements for use of local biofuels. While SFGreasecycle can meet some of this demand, the market opportunities opened up by the new contract may also help spur competition among public and private companies for production of alternative fuels.

SFGreasecycle will also provide a springboard for the SFPUC to address other conservation and social equity issues. There are plans for SFGreasecycle to provide education, internships, and jobs, particularly targeting less economically advantaged neighborhoods, such as Hunter’s Point. Ving says the utility may partner with nonprofits, such as Goodwill, and with community colleges to help residents develop job skills and safe, well-compensated employment. In addition to jobs in biofuel production, there are other training opportunities—for example, interns can earn their Class A drivers’ licenses while transporting waste vegetable oil and biodiesel.

The idea that every sewage system can become an energy conservation facility is precedent-setting, and an all-encompassing program like SFGreasecycle is still unique to San Francisco. “No other city is setting a goal to direct all of its organic food waste into biofuel,” says Ving. She hopes that SFGreasecycle can become a model urban zero waste program, not only for US cities, but throughout the world. She notes that many towns—from developed nations to third-world countries to remote places like the Amazon—have trouble both with importing fuel and disposing of their waste. Turning fat into fuel could be an elegant solution to both problems.

At the bottom of the signs is a phone number for the State Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC). Why did these warnings suddenly appear on a site that had sat vacant—and apparently unloved—for so long? For years, say neighbors, the only signs of life on the lot (other than weeds) were visible on Saturdays. Heidi Spanier, owner of a nearby vintage clothing store, says, “There would be kids playing there. They’d be in there and the gates would be closed.”

The records of the City of Berkeley’s Toxics Management Division (TMD) and the DTSC tell an unsettling tale. In 1939, Julius Chase purchased the site, which extended to 10th Street and then contained an auto-wrecking yard. Chase later sold the western side of the property for housing. Then he built an A&W restaurant, and when it closed, the graffiti-covered cinderblock building became Ali Baba’s restaurant, a tiny Persian burger joint. The small white brick building in back housed auto repair shops until the mid-1990s.

In December 27, 1985, a neighbor in the western residential area complained that waste oil poured on the ground by auto repair shop employees was running onto his property. A team from the Department of Health Services investigated. Next to the shop—Berkeley Auto Repair—they found a one-foot square hole approximately 4 feet deep, filled with black oily liquid. A pile of auto batteries sat nearby, and drums filled with waste oil and antifreeze were stored behind the restaurant.

Subsequent inspections by DTSC, the TMD, and environmental consultants retained by Chase revealed unsafe levels of lead, methylene chloride (used for cleaning auto parts), oil, and grease on many parts of the property. In 1990, DTSC oversaw yet another investigation and found that levels of these contaminants were still above EPA standards for industrial properties.

When Chase died in the early 1990s his heirs inherited liability for cleanup under a section of the Clean Water Act that states that whoever owns property can be held fully responsible for remediating contamination. That made Droubi Nahla liable when the heirs sold him the property in April of 1999. Nahla should have been made aware of the contamination—once property owners become aware that their land is contaminated, they are legally bound to disclose this information to prospective buyers. (The seller must disclose anything s/he knows, and the new owner is responsible for remediating any contamination that becomes apparent whether s/he knew about it or not. Clearly it is in the seller’s best interests not to know more than is absolutely required and in the buyer’s interest to know everything.)

Nahla retained Sequoia Environmental Consulting Services to evaluate the scope of the contamination and devise a plan for cleaning it. On August 16, 1999, TMD approved an assessment and cleanup work plan submitted by the firm. Prior to the plan’s approval, Geoff Fiedler from the TMD had inspected water samples from test drilling on the property and seen that some of the shallower groundwater had black oily bubbles floating in it. Fiedler expected to hear from Nahla or his representatives within three months, but years later the property still sat there, full of lead, oil, grease, and possibly methylene chloride.

Finally, in January 2005, the DTSC issued an Imminent and Substantial Endangerment Order and Remedial Action Order to compel Nahla to address the hazard. The order’s first requirement was that within 30 days Nahla would erect fences and signs according to DTSC specifications. Hence, the sudden appearance of Hazardous Materials warnings where children played on sunny Saturdays.

Failure to comply with the detailed specifications and timelines of the DTSC could cost Nahla up to $25,000 a day plus punitive damages of up to three times the amount of any costs incurred by DTSC. The DTSC’s Angela Blanchette explains that the first step is to again reassess the property. “Petroleum products break down over time, so the site might be less contaminated,” she says. “Methylene chloride can also break down, but lead doesn’t go away.” Fiedler, too, is worried about the lead. “Lead is particularly bad for children,” he says, and adds that in high concentrations, methylene chloride is a potent carcinogen. By year’s end, Nahla is expected to submit a cleanup plan. The scope of the remediation will depend on future use—cleanup standards are more stringent for residential properties than for commercial use. The DTSC says he will be required to excavate some lead-contaminated soil. After that, Nahla’s most affordable option might be to “seal” the rest of the contamination by paving it and using the land for parking.

The lead-contaminated soil must be moved to a hazardous waste landfill. Since there is only one such landfill in California, soil is often trucked out-of-state. Owners are liable for the expense of excavation and disposal—as well as for assessing contamination. New owners can sometimes offset the expense by suing previous owners or businesses that pollute.

If Nahla’s plan meets DTSC requirements, the agency will send fact sheets to a number of residences and businesses within two to three blocks of the contaminated site and to some public officials, opening the plan to a 30-day public review. After the plan is modified, DTSC anticipates that the cleanup excavation of the lead will take a day or two in February of 2006.

Why did 20 years go by before any action was taken to clean up the site once it was known to be toxic? And why were children allowed to play on property where lead had been detected?

Neither the city nor DTSC could answer these questions. Nor could they say how many similar situations exist in Berkeley. Fiedler is concerned that there are many more severely contaminated vacant or underdeveloped lots, and notes, “Lead is all over West Berkeley.” He explains that the problem is particularly severe there because industrial and commercial activity has always been concentrated west of San Pablo. Large factories once spewed out toxic waste. The area is still dotted with auto repair shops that used to keep underground gasoline tanks to top off their customers’ cars, and Fiedler says the shops cleaned greasy floors and auto parts by hosing them off with leaded gasoline.

The scope of the hazardous contamination in West Berkeley may not become evident until more property is sold for redevelopment. Many prospective buyers will want environmental assessments because they know they may become liable for cleanup. If state or federal funds are used to develop property, environmental assessments are mandatory.

Decades ago, when regulations on underground tanks were much less stringent, small gas stations and repair shops were scattered everywhere, even in residential areas.

“In Berkeley,” Fiedler says, “we recommend that people use raised beds, that they do not garden in the soil.” The neglected lot on San Pablo Avenue may be small, but it exemplifies a far larger problem: the legacy of toxins used so carelessly in the past.