Septage Pumper Truck On A Semi Sunny Day

Pumper trucks have been rolling continuously through Los Osos as laterals have been installed and septic tanks emptied. Where does all that stuff go? The City of Santa Maria!

Septage Receiving:
The Regulatory Compliance group operates the Septage Receiving Facility at the WWTP, and issues permits to waste haulers. The only facility of its kind on the Central Coast, this facility provides an important service to surrounding communities. The facility accepts deposited waste from portable toilets and residential and commercial septage, and allows haulers to dewater and store grease from restaurants. 

There was a burp in our new sewer's collection system seven months ago after sneaky contractor dumped some of this goop directly into the new sewer pipe - you can read about it here in a story by Neil Farrell in the Bay News:

http://www.tolosapressnews.com/first-hiccups-community-sewer/

I don't know If this is what happens in Santa Maria, but this video of septage delivery and processing is pretty fun—for sewer geeks anyway—the contraption featured is called a "Honey Monster!" The video has only gotten four views, so maybe you dear readers, can boost the viewership. Added bonus, the music is straight out of the 1980s!

Doing It Right

I was at Noi's Little Thai Takeout in Baywood on Tuesday for lunch and saw something I'd only heard about before—cooking oil recycling. Naturally Noi's would do this right, as she does cooking right (in ten years of Thai food that I have eaten, never any meal was less than perfect).

What I saw was a tank truck and a hose that looked like one from Al's Septic.

Then I noticed this:

A guy with the hose just attaching it to some above ground outlet. I didn't want to be too obvious about this picture taking; I think no one would recognize him here so I won't get sued or anything. Anyway, the name on the truck was "Salinas Tallow" and the picture became clear.

This is what we need to do when our new sewer comes online peeps! NOT put fat, especially fat that will solidify, down our drains! Who know what we are doing now, it is an individual thing, and I suspect that we are all cheap enough to not abuse our septic tanks for our own good. But lest we forget, it will be a whole new era of flushing, one of flushing into into a communal pipe. What someone does downhill with grease could well affect what doesn't go down when we uphill flushers flush! Remember that London Fatburger post from some months back? 

I do sometimes have nightmares about certain sewer obstructionists who claimed a gravity system would fail as they, weeping and tooth gnashing, were forced to live without their beloved STEP/STEG system. I fear sabotage frankly, but it is probably very bad to put those thoughts out there just in case this idea has not yet been crocheted into an actual plot from strands of personal bitterness, rent hair, and bacon grease.

On another note, on the way home from SLO today, this was in front of me! Please click on the image for the larger size. It is always a jolly day when you can see the oversized license plate with "SHT2GO" in big red letters on Al's trucks.....ahhh, Los Osos, what a bubbly zest for life we have here!

Got P**p?

I was driving around Los Osos the other day and spotted a pristine stainless steel tanker truck. There was a catchy phrase on the back, mimicking a very famous ad that we have all seen on TV and in magazines and on billboards for years, "Got Milk?"

The phrase was first used on TV ads where someone is eating peanut butter or something very dry and is asked to answer a question but can't, as their mouth is too puttied shut, and below their beseeching and stressed out face would be the words "Got milk?" with a voice-over of that phrase. Later print ads featured various famous people wearing very fake looking white milk mustaches. This phrase was a product of ad agency Goodby Silverstein and Partners created in 1993 and it ran until February of this year (although the phrase will still be used by the Milk Processing Board in California).

So I actually had to turn my car around, go back to park and get out to take a shot of the parody of this 20-year old ad slogan.

Only in Los Osos.... and thanks goes to Al's Septic!