By Alex Lantsberg
Billions of gallons of clean Pacific rainwater fall on San Francisco. Most of it lands on city streets where it mixes with road waste or on rooftops before flowing into a vast 900 mile network of pipes, pumps, and treatment plants which then discharge it to the Bay and Ocean. It is now waste and its treatment is concentrated in San Francisco's most polluted neighborhood. Meanwhile we pull more water out of the already stressed Tuolumne River. With clean water ever more at a premium, a Sewer System Master plan for this virtually invisible 900-mile network pipes and pumps is central to putting San Francisco and its residents on an environmentally just and sustainable water use path.
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Hair Mat and Mushroom Remediation- Image: Matter of TrustWhile news has slowed about the November oil spill of 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel from the Cosco Busan into the San Francisco Bay, Lisa Gautier, head of a San Francisco non-profit called Matter of Trust, and a team in the Presidio are busy working to change the way we clean up oil spills in the future. They are doing this by making a lasagna of sorts.
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What better way to connect with your water supply than to marry it (to your garden)? Reflecting on a recent look at a water catchment barrel, it became quite clear to me that we don't need all the water pipes that pump water to our homes, but rather could quite easily take advantage of the natural cycle of water and our local watershed.
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