What does it smell like in a wastewater treatment plant? Not as bad as you might think. A powerful chemical-detergent smell pervades, masking something the nose can’t quite identify.
These “climber screens” are the first line of defense, where things like rags and sticks are taken out.
Once through the door and into the innards of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control plant, our guide Catania showed us the “influent gates” where the first big chunks are removed, and from there on to a series of vast, almost Home Depot-size rooms where alien activities took place.
One was the basement level of the 70-foot-tall, 750,000-gallon “digesters” where the solid waste is mixed with bacteria and, over the process of two weeks or so, turned into “biosolids.” This transformation emits loads of heat, which is harnessed to supply almost half the plant’s power.
The bottom of a digester looks like a concrete stalactite.
Where does all that stuff end up? About 60 percent of solid waste in the United States is turned into fertilizer. In San Francisco about a quarter of what goes down the drain and the toilet ends up tilled into the farms of Sonoma County.
Will I be able to forge this the next time I breathe in the aroma of a Sonoma cabernet?
To be continued…
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