Category:Wastewater Treatment

SJS / GreenPolicy Siterunner:

Many years ago after I graduated from the University of Southern California, I worked for a period of time with the Oakland School District as a consultant. I was writing environmental speeches and public remarks for Eddie Albert, the actor who was an early environmental advocate, and one of the subject we spoke of was "cleaning up the Bay", San Francisco Bay. The Oakland schools asked me to give tours of the new East Bay Wastewater Treatment plant and for many months I became, as I was fondly known, "the poop plant tour guy".

Here's the plant years later.

It became a model for many similar plants around the nation at the beginning of the "clean water era".

One of my favorite parts of the tours was at the conclusion of the learning lesson, when I'd bring the kids down to the shores of San Francisco Bay and walk them along the edge, looking at tidal pools, now brimming with life as a result of having cleaned up the Bay's waters.

I'd tell them stories of Jack London and 'how it used to be' when he fished the Bay and how it became, serious polluted with "industrial effluents including what comes out of your houses into the sewers and, in the old days, untreated 'it' flowed directly into the bay.

It was impressive to see them understand how cleaning up the environment for the good of all could, and did, work.