County needs to fix food truck problems

Editor,

I feel I must respond to the comments made by the Worcester County Health Department in reference to mobile food trucks and trailers. That they are willing to work with vendors is just wrong.

When I purchased a food trailer several years ago, I had made a custom food trailer with all the necessary NSF equipment, including a NSF smoker. At that time, I was the owner of the winery in Whaleyville. As soon as food trailer arrived, the health department and county permit office started to deny me use of it.

The health department advised me that food trailers were not allowed and if I wanted to use it, it had to be hooked up to the winery. The county permit office said I couldn’t sell food at the winery. So I had to get a text amendment added to the county code. It took a couple months to get that done.

When that was accomplished, it all started. I was told I needed a building permit to hook it to the winery. I applied for a building permit and was told I needed a plumbing inspection and an electrical inspection, a fire marshal inspection, a water test, a grease trap, a sewer connection and two back flow preventers.

The water connection was the hardest to comply with as environmental health kept changing what hose I needed even though the original hose was NSP compliant. Now this is for a legally tagged and titled trailer. It took me about four months of trying to comply with all their rules and thousands of dollars spent to finally end with a mobile food kitchen, which wasn’t allowed in Worcester County but was legal in surrounding counties.

The County Commissioners need to step up and fix this situation. They have known about this for years. It’s too late for me.

Jack Lord