An Archer Road restaurant has been cited for illegally dumping used chicken wing grease.

An Archer Road restaurant has been cited for illegally dumping used chicken wing grease.

The WingHouse Bar & Grill, 3857 SW Archer Road, was fined for improperly disposing of used cooking oil onto the property in two locations south and west of the restaurant, where it then flowed into a nearby retention pond.

The restaurant violated a city of Gainesville ordinance by creating “irreparable” hazardous conditions, according to a citation filed by the city in April.

The business was fined $521 for the first offense violation, records show. Court records show that the restaurant paid the fine.

In March, the Gainesville Police Department followed up on a tip that used cooking oil was being dumped on the ground behind the restaurant, according to a Gainesville police report. The pond behind the restaurant collects storm water from the parking lot.

The pond appeared to be “soaked” with cooking oil all the way to its rim, with the oil lying thick in the middle, the report said. Police also found grease residue and oil on the back door of the business and pooled by a wall.

Jeff Look, the interim department head for the city’s code enforcement department, said that although citations for grease trap violations are common, they are typically small-scale incidents that involve accidentally spilling a bucket of oil. A grease trap is a plumbing device that intercepts grease and solids from entering a wastewater disposal system.

“This is the first time in 16 years there has been a case like this,” Look said.

Police said they are continuing to investigate.

The department has since followed up with WingHouse and it's now in compliance, Look said.

Gus Olnos, hazardous waste manager with the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department, said the department gave WingHouse a warning after the restaurant violated a water quality code.

Dumping oil poses an environmental hazard because oil discarded without a grease trap to filter solid waste can clog pipes. Clogged pipes can lead to sewage spills.

“There are a lot of ways to properly dispose of this,” he said. “There was absolutely no need to do this.”

Restaurants usually collect oil in large bins behind the business, which are then collected and safely disposed of by the county’s waste processing center.

A kitchen manager interviewed by police said the bulk of WingHouse’s cooking oil is removed from the restaurant using the bin collection system once a month, according to the investigative report.

Olnos said as of May 7, WingHouse had cleaned up the retention pond and is in compliance with the county’s environmental protection department.

The kitchen manager interviewed by police said the current oil system was only about a month old at the time of the violations, and he had not used it much, the report said.

The kitchen manager also said it is a self-contained filtered system that requires only “slag oil,” fallen pieces of food at the bottom of the fryer, to be removed nightly, the report said.

An employee interviewed by police said that prior to the new system, workers would dump the oil in the parking lot outside the back door and wash it into the pond with a hose, the report said.

He showed police video footage of an employee properly disposing of the oil during the investigation. The officer noted that about 16 cameras show different vantage points of the store, but that one camera did not display an image, the report said.

The officer later found out that the camera pointing outside where the oil was being dumped had not been working for the past month, the report said.

A manager at WingHouse did not comment on the code violation warning or citation, saying such answers must come through their corporate office. A call to the corporate office Monday afternoon wasn't quickly returned.