Can a food truck dump wastewater at a Chandler commissary?

The city's page opens by classifying the water: "Mobile food establishment wastewater is classified as gray water containing fats, oils, and grease (FOG) and high loads of organic matter from food and beverage products." That sentence is why a truck's sink water is treated like a restaurant's kitchen waste and not like ordinary wash water.

The next sentence sets the rule: "Wastewater that contains any quantity of FOG must be treated through a properly sized and maintained grease trap or interceptor before discharging to the Public-Owned Treatment Works (POTW)." The phrase "any quantity" means there is no small-amount exception in the text. The commissary's grease device is the treatment.

Then the page asks the operator's question for them: "Need approval to discharge your mobile food establishment, food truck, or food cart’s wastewater to a commissary located in the City of Chandler?" Its answer is to submit the online form on the page. The form asks for:

• The requester's name, address, phone and email, and the name of the mobile food establishment.
• The commissary's business name, address and phone.
• The commissary's FOG removal device type, either grease interceptor or grease trap.
• The device capacity in gallons.
• The estimated frequency and volume of gray water to be discharged through that device.

The page does not state a fee, a review time or an inspection step. It is a request form, so those details are not something this page can promise.

• Commissary: Maricopa County's health code defines it as "a food establishment that acts as a base of operation for a mobile food establishment." In practice it is the licensed kitchen where a truck stocks up, cleans and dumps.
• Gray water: the city's page uses this word for the wastewater a mobile food establishment produces, which it says contains FOG.
• FOG: fats, oils and grease.
• Grease trap versus grease interceptor: the form makes you pick one. The city page does not define the difference. Generally a trap is the smaller, often indoor unit and an interceptor is the larger, often outdoor tank, which is a reading and not the city's definition. See the difference between the two.
• POTW: the publicly owned treatment works, meaning the city sewer and treatment plant.

It covers operators of mobile food establishments, food trucks and food carts that want to send wastewater to a commissary located in Chandler. It also touches the commissary owner, whose grease device is the one named on the form.

It does not apply if the commissary is in another city. Chandler's page is about commissaries "located in the City of Chandler." A truck that dumps in Mesa deals with Mesa's process, covered below.

A new truck picks a Chandler commissary. The owner signs a commissary agreement for the county permit, then fills in the city form with the commissary's details, grease device type and capacity, and a guess at how many gallons the truck sends each day. The commissary manager usually knows the device size, so the two of them fill it in together.

A busy weekend event truck. It carries more gray water than a lunch cart. The city's form asks for the "estimated frequency and volume," so an honest, higher number belongs on the form and not a number that looks small.

The edge case: the commissary sits across a city line. A truck based in Chandler dumps at a commissary in Mesa. Chandler's form covers commissaries "located in the City of Chandler", and Mesa runs its own commissary request form for Mesa commissaries, so Mesa's form is the one to ask about, not Chandler's. The answer flips with the commissary's address, not the truck's home base.

1. 1Get the commissary's exact business name, address and phone from its manager.
2. 2Ask the manager whether the commissary has a grease interceptor or a grease trap, and its capacity in gallons.
3. 3Estimate how often the truck will dump and roughly how many gallons each time.
4. 4Open the city's Food Truck Discharge Form and fill in the requester and commissary sections.
5. 5Keep a copy of your submission with the commissary agreement that goes to Maricopa County Environmental Services.
6. 6If the city has questions, the page footer lists 480-782-2000 for the City of Chandler.

• Myth: The county permit covers my wastewater. The county's page says a commissary agreement is required for each unit at permitting and renewal, and separately sends a truck to the local city's pretreatment program for wastewater approval only when the commissary is not on the county list and the truck has a 3-compartment sink.
• Myth: Gray water from a truck is just soapy water. The city page classifies it as water containing fats, oils and grease and high loads of organic matter.
• Myth: A small amount of grease does not matter. The city's rule says "any quantity of FOG" must go through a trap or interceptor first.
• Myth: Any approved commissary works in any city. The approval is tied to where the commissary sits, so a Mesa commissary means a Mesa request.

This page explains Chandler's published rules for mobile food operators. The city's own page and form govern, and fees, forms and steps can change.