Deseretnews.com                                 Tuesday, February 26,2002 Think twice about using disposal By Amy Joi  Bryson Deseret News staff writer        It's convenient, at your disposal  with a flick of a switch and something that will cost you money in the long run.        Dispose of the disposal, Salt Lake City experts warn, or find  yourself paying for it a few years from now with a new wastewater treatment  plant that will cost millions.        Whether you throw food down the kitchen  drain to be ground into tiny bits or scrape it off plates into the garbage, it  still winds up at the same place -- at the local landfill.                                                            It's simply a  matter of what kind of priority residents are willing to place on efficiency.        "It can be hauled away much easier than having it disposed of through the sewer system to travel through hundreds of miles of collection pipes and onto the wastewater treatment where it is treated and then taken as  sludge to the landfill," says Salt Lake City's LeRoy Hooton Jr.        Hooton is director of the city's Department of Public Utilities, which conducted a  study three years ago to determine the source and severity of what's called  increasing "wasteloads" in the sewer system.        The results warned a continuing trend in the amount of waste would require significant improvements,  either in the form of an expanded plant or a new facility to handle the loads.        City officials first turned their attention to those in the industry of processing food or serving it.        Hooton says restaurants contribute 19 percent of the waste, while food-processing plants are responsible for 15 percent.        Through an aggressive education campaign accompanied by  increased regulatory measures and higher sewage rates for businesses, Hooton said the city has been able to effectively curtail the amount of food products  dumped down the drain.        "Individually, the potential is high for many of these places that may serve hundreds of meals a day and are in the constant  business of handling food," Hooton said. "We've worked with the Utah Restaurant Association and others to decrease those wasteloads. Their incentive is lower sewer charges if they take those measures."        Although most households have a garbage disposal, Hooton says residents are unaware of the strain those appliances place on a city's sewage system.        City residents will receive  the information about the solids and the plea to trash the disposal in this month's water bill. Residents account for 35 percent of the waste that needs to be treated.        "If everyone collectively in our system reduces what they  put down the kitchen sink, collectively that adds up to quite a bit," Hooton said. "It will result in the long term the delaying of the construction of new  treatment facilities."        Scraping food off kitchen ware into the garbage can also save water usage, since most people run their faucets when they operate the disposal, Hooton said.        "I think in this day and age people  recognize we have an effect on the environment, and we can affect that positively by what we do in our own home." E-MAIL: amyjoi@desnews.com