Spring 08
Vol. 13 No. 2

By Paul Beckman

Bill Goloby demonstrates how a simple plastic box with a foil-lined bag can keep grease from leaking into the city’s water system.

Standing near the stage before his audience arrived, Bill Goloby popped in a CD. The familiar hit tune “Ghostbusters” started jumping through the speaker.

“I wrote the words to this song,” he said.

But in this version, lyrics about busting ghosts were out. Busting grease was in.

“The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts did the singing,” he added.

Goloby, a project manager for Public Works and Engineering, doesn’t fancy himself a rock star. The jamming he’s most concerned with is the kind that plagues pipes and sewer lines.

When people dump grease, fat, and oil into kitchen sinks and down toilets, the system clogs.

And taxpayers pay millions of dollars every year for expensive trucks with special equipment and skilled people to operate the equipment that cleans up the sewer lines.

So Goloby is pulling out all the stops to rope people into the city’s Corral the Grease program.

Grease on stage
For the past three years, Goloby has been the city’s squeaky wheel. Now he spends a few evenings each month speaking to civic groups, environmental organizations, and Super Neighborhood gatherings.

The Acres Home Multi-Purpose Center was the most recent stop on his Houston tour.

As Goloby set up his presentation, his looping “Greasebusters” serenaded people to their seats.

Empty food cans on a display table looked like props for a comic skit. But by adding a universal lid, a lid that fits any can, Goloby converted a pork and beans can into one of the greatest weapons against the grease problem.      

He encouraged his listeners to put their fat, grease and oil in the cans, seal it with the universal lid, and put it in the garbage.

When grease accumulates in the sewer system, it reduces water flow. In warm weather the grease floats. When cold, it solidifies. Sometimes it even blocks pipes completely.  

Clogs in the sewer lines cause that water to back up, overflow, and spill into creeks, bayous, and the storm drain system.

“So that goes directly to the bayou untreated,” Goloby said. “Beach closures sometimes happen because of these problems, even a contamination of drinking water.”

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