When a toilet flushes in San Francisco, its contents join a churning current of wastewater that travels through more than 1,000 miles of sewer pipes beneath the city streets. Most of that water is going to the same place: a 40-acre facility in the Bayview.
Eighty percent of San Francisco’s wastewater is processed at the Southeast Treatment Plant, which treats about 45 million gallons a day: enough to fill 68 Olympic swimming pools. It has been more than a decade since the city’s Public Utilities Commission decided that the facility was due for an upgrade. Some of its machinery dated to 1952, before the agency was concerned about odor control or rising sea levels.
Read MoreSource: San Francisco Chronicle