Sewer Plant Tour

I took a tour of the San Francisco Oceanside Treatment Plant Tuesday with a group of plumbers from the Plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors association of San Francisco.

If you have never been, what a facility! Most of the plant is underground, in fact some of the roof area is designed to handle hoofed animals from the zoo.

The Plant processes 20 % of the citys sewage, to be exact thats 17 Million gallions of sewage a day in dry weather and up to 60 million gallons in wet weather.

The first thing the tour guide told us was to that the only thing to go down a toilet should be one of the 3 P’s (Poo, Pee, and Paper) we have been telling clinents this for years. In fact anything that does go down that shouldn’t has to be removed before the sewage can be processed.

The sewage in eleven hours goes though 3 processes before being pumped 4.5 Miles out to sea. in the process the plant creates enough methane gas to make electricity that power 30% of the plant.

One of the things that really impressed me was how clean the whole facility is, it did smell in some areas but not as bad as you might think.

If you would like more information on the sewer plant or a possible tour, go to :http://sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=396