Schaffer’s owner Kari Smith would have to sell a lot of $3 cups of coffee at the café she wants to include in her new store to cover an expense created by a recent ordinance change in Greater Des Moines.

Recently, Smith learned that she is required to install a large grease catcher that could cost up to $75,000 for the 20-seat café at the building she plans to share with Boesen the Florist in the West Glen Town Center. It’s a cost she hadn’t anticipated, and one that may cause her and her partners to change their plans.

“We are on hold right now while we wait to see if any changes are made to the ordinance,” Smith said. “Right now the expense is too high for us to incur.”

On July 1, an ordinance took effect in Greater Des Moines requiring all new food service establishments and ones that undergo extensive renovations to install external grease interceptors with a capacity of at least 1,000 gallons. Versions of the ordinance were passed late last year by the 16 towns and municipalities in the Des Moines Wastewater Reclamation Authority, the organization that is responsible for treating sewage in these communities.

According to WRA Director Bill Stowe, the city of Des Moines has about 20 sanitary sewer overflows each year, which cost the city an estimated $200,000 to clean up. He said about 17 of the 20 overflows are caused by fats, oil and grease (FOG) or roots in the water. Since it’s nearly impossible to prevent tree branches and plant matter from entering the sewers, the WRA felt a need to increase its management of FOG, Stowe said.

The leaders of the WRA see the grease interceptors as part of a solution to the ongoing problem of costly and messy sewer overflows largely caused by fats, oil and grease entering the sanitary sewers, Stowe said. But some business owners say the ordinance needs to be revisited to make sure it does not create a barrier for small businesses like coffeehouses that produce little or no grease, yet are subject to the same requirements as fast-food chains.

“The challenge of the existing ordinance is that all food service establishments are the same,” Smith said. “But a coffee shop does not produce the same amount of fats, oil and grease that a large restaurant or a Kentucky Fried Chicken does.”

Stowe said the reasoning for including all food service establishments in the ordinance is that small eateries or coffeehouses often expand their menus after they’ve opened.

“From our experience, a food service establishment can quickly expand from being just a coffee shop to a larger grease producer by adding items like croissants, sandwiches and French fries,” Stowe said. “This is our method to be proactive with preventing sewerage overflows while meeting the EPA’s requirements for keeping grease and contaminants out of the water.”

Stowe said the installation costs for these grease interceptors can be as little as $6,000 to $8,000 for a straightforward installation of a 5-foot-by-8-foot poured concrete structure, on up to 10 times that amount for more complicated installations where there are site issues to contend with. In Smith’s case, plumbing contractors have told her that working around underground utilities and other site issues would put the cost of her installation in the $55,000 to $75,000 range.

As part of the ordinance, owners of food service establishments are also required to have the grease interceptors cleaned as necessary by a company that has been trained by the WRA to handle FOG.

Prior to the ordinance change, food service establishments were subject to plumbing codes requiring grease traps in the sinks to filter the grease out from the water flowing into the sewer system. Some larger restaurants opted to have the external grease interceptors to be “good corporate citizens,” Stowe said.

Smith said she supports the WRA’s efforts to keep FOG out of the sanitary sewers, but she argues that the rules for controlling these cooking byproducts should take into consideration different types of food service establishments.

“The purpose is really important,” Smith said. “Nobody wants to forget the purpose to protect the city’s water and sewer systems.

“But you don’t need a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. In our instance, we could manage the grease we produce with a much smaller unit.”

Smith filed an appeal with the WRA this summer to see if her café could be excluded from having to install the 1,000-gallon grease trap. Instead, she proposed using a smaller grease trap under the sink to control the FOG. The smaller unit was what she had budgeted for in the building plans and based her permits on in 2005. But when construction got behind on the building, she found herself faced with the new ordinance.

A couple of weeks ago, Smith was told that her appeal had been denied.

“The ordinance is brand-new, and we are really some of the first ones to challenge it,” Smith said. “When something is new, sometimes it isn’t completely thought out what are all the residual effects when it is enforced.”

As of now, Smith is the only one to file an appeal, but another may soon follow. Amici Espresso, a West Des Moines-based coffeehouse chain that began opening stores in Central Iowa earlier this year, is now facing the same problem Smith has dealt with for her café. The Amici store under construction in the Midland Building at 206 Sixth Ave. may also be required to install a 1,000-gallon external grease interceptor. Greg Tornberg, president of Mille Miglia Caffe LLC, which owns the Amici locations, said his company is waiting to hear back from the WRA if the coffeehouse falls under the classification of a food service establishment and would be required to comply with the ordinance. He estimates that the cost to install the underground unit at the new store would be over $50,000.

Tornberg is hopeful that Amici will be excluded from the ordinance because the coffeehouses only prepare beverages, not food. The baked goods sold at Amici are bought from an outside vendor and baked offsite. If the WRA determines that the coffeehouse qualifies as a food service establishment, Tornberg expects to file an appeal with the organization as Smith has done.

Smith is concerned that the ordinance could hurt economic development by imposing a financial burden on new or expanding small businesses. Stowe said the new ordinance shouldn’t hurt business development because it includes an economic hardship provision that says that the WRA will work with a business owner who demonstrates an extraordinary economic hardship to find a management practice that accomplishes the objective of keeping FOG out of the sanitary sewers.

Des Moines City Manager Rick Clark, who also serves as a board member for the WRA, agrees with Smith that it is important to pay close attention to balancing the costs the ordinance creates for a business owner with the public benefits of these changes.

“There clearly is a burden placed on the sewer system if restaurants don’t adequately deal with the fats and grease that come off their operation,” Clark said. “I’m not ready to say that we need to change a thing with the ordinance, but I think that we need to monitor the regulation to make sure it’s achieving the desired effect and it’s not causing some undue hardship.

“If every new restaurant couldn’t go forward because this cost was too high, then we would have to go back and look at this again. I don’t thing that was the desired intent here. At this point, we need to simply be mindful of the impact and sensitive to the issues that arise out of it and monitor it as we go along.”