State Rep. Kathy Webb is seeking to have Arkansas declare a state of emergency due to people failing to scrape grease from their dishes or trap the grease in special grease collectors before washing the dishes in dishwashers or the kitchen sink.
Webb has submitted Interim Study Proposal 2011-201, an act “to declare an emergency” over the alleged crisis.
Webb’s bill claims food grease presents an emergency risk of sewer overflows that threatens the environment.
“It is in the public interest to establish a Fat, Oil, and Grease Advisory Committee to study the recommended measures to better ensure that the collection, transportation, disposal, and recycling of fat, oil, and grease are done in a manner that is protective of the environment,” reads the bill.
According to the bill, the state will appoint a 14-member committee “with adequate staff and facilities” to study the frying-pan-grease emergency and recommend legislation, enforcement, and other emergency government action to fight food grease. Even after such action, the committee and its “adequate staff and facilities” will perpetually exist, convene, and soak up taxpayer resources.
This emergency bill will apparently do more than merely save the environment. “Therefore, an emergency is declared to exist, and this act [is] immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health, and safety,” declares the bill.
Frying hamburgers is now The People’s Business of the Highest Order.
Read more in my weekly Forbes.com column, available here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/05/02/arkansas-rep-seeks-emergency-power-over-frying-pan-grease/
