Sanchez walked her street with an album full of photographs and news clippings as she retold stories of the floods.

Pointing to one house, she recalled the death of her neighbor’s dog in 2004 when six feet of water poured into their garage shorting the electrical outlets. That family has since left the neighborhood.

The same 2004 flood devastated Sanchez’s home.

“I lost everything that was down in the basement,” Sanchez said. “My pictures, memories, things that I had from my kids, a sewing machine, everything that I had.”

The loss of irreplaceable items was only the start. The flooding damaged her home’s foundation, warped her garage door, left her drywall contaminated with mold, and flooded her backyard garden with residential, commercial and industrial waste.

Maria (left) and her mother, Victoria Sanchez, stand in front of their home on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco on Nov. 28, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

“We didn’t have flood insurance because we couldn’t afford it,” said Sanchez’s daughter Maria. “The house’s foundation is still damaged to this day.”

Neighbors recounted similar experiences of a 2014 flood that once again inundated Mission Terrace homes and businesses with sewage.

“We are always on edge for the next rain,” Sanchez said. “Until this is fixed, the flooding will likely happen again.”

Mission Terrace isn’t the only San Francisco neighborhood to suffer problems with destructive flooding that both residents and government agencies trace to the city’s failure to upgrade sections of its sewer system.

A home along Cayuga with permanent sandbags. (Courtesy of Casey Michie)

Frustrated with the inaction by the San Francisco government, neighbors from several neighborhoods, including parts of the Mission and West Portal areas, have banded together in a campaign called Solutions Not Sandbags to demand action from the city.

Problems with the sewer system have also drawn the attention of state and federal regulators.

In 2021, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a cleanup and abatement order, and the flooding prompted an order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the city to begin monitoring and reporting sewage overflows like the ones on Cayuga Avenue.

A house is surrounded by sandbags on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco on Nov. 28, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

A review of hundreds of pages of court documents and studies, interviews with a dozen residents, experts and officials from multiple government agencies shows San Francisco has delayed upgrading sections of sewers that continue to cause damage to residents’ property.

“This flooding isn’t just rainwater,” said David Hooper, an advocate with Solutions Not Sandbags. “This is water mixed with sewage waste, this is contamination.”

Why it floods on Cayuga Avenue

Apart from some older sections of downtown Sacramento, San Francisco is the only California city served by a sewer system that collects both wastewater and stormwater in a single set of pipes.

According to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, each day the system handles roughly 80 million gallons of residential, commercial and industrial wastewater that is treated before being discharged into the bay or ocean.

When it rains, stormwater increases that flow dramatically, and city facilities collect and treat up to 500 million gallons a day.

Heavy rains can overwhelm the system, requiring excess flows of mixed sewage and stormwater to be discharged into nearby waters — something the SFPUC says happens about 10 times a year on average.

But sometimes those heavy flows hit bottlenecks in the system, forcing sewage up onto neighborhood streets before it can reach the discharge points.

One of the bottlenecks lies downstream of Cayuga Avenue, where a sewer main beneath Alemany Boulevard can’t handle the volume of water that arrives during prolonged heavy rain.

A map from the 2010 Sewer System Master Plan by the San Francisco Public Works showing where flood complaints are located on Cayuga Avenue and predictions of where floods will take place next over 5 years. (Courtesy of San Francisco Public Works)

Models created by the city’s Public Works department show that a five-year storm — a storm with a 20% chance of occurring in any given year — will trigger flows that exceed the capacity of the pipe beneath the boulevard and lead to flooding of Lower Alemany and along Cayuga Avenue.

Cayuga’s geographic setting is also a problem. The street runs downhill along the course of a natural stream. The lower, eastern end of the street butts up against Interstate 280 — which essentially acts as a dam to water flowing down the street. When the Alemany sewer main backs up, the lack of drainage further complicates the flooding in the area.

“Initially the Public Utilities Commission’s argument was that it’s the watershed causing the flooding, claiming that more green infrastructure will solve the problem,” said Lisa Dunseth, an advocate of Solutions Not Sandbags. “The problem is actually a structural engineering issue where the sewers are too small. And they knew it. And it’s been that way for over 50 years.”

In fact, problems with sewer capacity downstream of the Mission Terrace neighborhood were known more than 50 years ago.

In 1964, a project to enlarge a section of the sewer along lower Alemany Boulevard was listed as one of dozens of projects that might benefit from a bond issue on the city’s June ballot. The bond passed, but the sewer improvements never materialized.

Throughout the 1970s, improvements in the area were sidelined as the city invested in higher-priority projects to comply with new requirements enacted by the federal Clean Water Act.

In 2009 — five years after the flooding that beset Cayuga Avenue and destroyed Victoria Sanchez’s belongings — the SFPUC commissioned a new analysis of the sewer system and suggested needed improvements.

The resulting 2010 Sewer System Master Plan acknowledged the sewer bottleneck problem in the neighborhood and proposed two possible solutions costing roughly $250 million according to documents. A less costly “eastward solution” proposed building a 6,000-foot auxiliary sewer under Alemany Boulevard to aid in handling high flows during rain events, while the preferred “westward” solution recommended constructing a relief sewer that would route flow from the Cayuga area to terminate at Ocean Beach.

The 2010 Sewer System Master Plan evolved into the 2012 Sewer System Improvement Project in which the Lower Alemany solutions were not included due to “budget constraints and a desire to evaluate an integrated approach to Lower Alemany including gray and green infrastructure,” according to a statement from the SFPUC.

The continued inaction has led to further flooding and subsequent damage of residents’ homes in recent years. Nancy Huff and Bob Popko, who bought their house on Cotter Street in the Mission Terrace neighborhood in 2012, recounted a flood that occurred in 2014.

“We lost boxes and boxes of old childhood photographs. Things that were irreplaceable were just totally gone,” Huff said. “We had to replace the downstairs bathroom that had just been put in within less than a year. We had to cut out the damaged drywall, the tiling was ruined. It all had to be replaced because it just wouldn’t dry.”

After the 2014 flood, some Mission Terrace residents filed suit against the city and began demanding answers from officials at public meetings.

“The city was not responsive,” said Huff. “That is why there have been two lawsuits from this neighborhood against the city, both of which the city lost. We had the SFPUC and [former SFPUC Director] Harlan Kelly on our street over and over and over again, and they were just very hand-wavy and noncommittal on the issue.”

In 2018, eight years after the publication of the Sewer System Master Plan that identified needed improvements, the SFPUC included the Lower Alemany area into the Sewer System Improvement Plan.

“It’s kind of sad to me that San Francisco is not helping its residents, because we do pay property taxes like everyone else,” said Maria Sanchez.

State and federal regulators step in

The Clean Water Act requires cities to maintain a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, which outlines the conditions under which pollutants can be released into waters under federal jurisdiction.

NPDES permits must be renewed every five years, and in 2019 San Francisco challenged new requirements added to its Oceanside Treatment Plant permit.

According to a requirement in the new permit, San Francisco would have to report discharges at any point of the sewer system, not just from outfalls along the coast.

In 2020, the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board denied San Francisco’s challenges to the new permit. In a decision denying review, the board said the new reporting requirement is “an appropriate mechanism … to determine whether the permitted combined sewer system is operating in compliance with the permit, including the requirement to maximize storage without increasing upstream flooding into basements and streets, which can negatively impact human health and the environment.”

The new permit is currently on hold pending a city appeal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Amid the city’s wrangling with the EPA, the regional branch of the state’s water quality agency also got involved in the issue of overflowing sewers. Under an agreement hammered out last year, the city will comply with an order from the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board to address flooding issues in three neighborhoods.

A scanned picture from Victoria Sanchez’s photo album of the aftermath of flooding along Cayuga Avenue on Feb. 25, 2004. (Photo courtesy of Victoria Sanchez)

The order requires the city to invest up to $600 million to fix the chronic overflow problems near 15th Avenue and Wawona Street in the city’s West Portal neighborhood, 17th and Folsom in the Mission and Lower Alemany downstream of Cayuga Avenue.

The project to address flooding in West Portal broke ground last year, with an estimated completion date of spring 2024.

The projects to remedy flooding at 17th and Folsom and Lower Alemany are still in the planning phases.

“The settlement will also allow the city one year to assess alternative designs for the projects that will benefit the Folsom and Lower Alemany neighborhoods,” said Joseph Sweiss, SFPUC press secretary. “Potential approaches involve both traditional capacity improvements and surface improvements, such as green infrastructure.”

During the SFPUC commission meeting on April 12, documents were presented outlining the potential solutions to address the flooding in the Lower Alemany and Cayuga areas.

The Alemany auxiliary solution, which was first proposed in the 1964 bond measure and then again in the 2010 Sewer System Master Plan, would install 6,000 feet of a 10-foot diameter pipe to alleviate pressure on the Alemany sewer.

Documents show that design completion for the Lower Alemany project is forecast for July 2024. The project is forecast to be complete in March 2028.

Still, residents of Mission Terrace are skeptical given the city’s track record with large capital improvement projects.

“If you look at Van Ness [rapid bus project], if you look at the Central Subway, construction on both projects were way over budget and years out of date,” Hooper said.

The SFPUC acknowledges that the sewer improvements will take time.

“Since these complex and large-scale capital projects take years, the SFPUC provides support and resources tailored to these neighborhoods, including but not limited to flood insurance resources, free sandbags coordinated and delivered to these residents, and expanded stormwater grants up to $100,000 to upgrade properties for stronger resilience and flood prevention measures,” said Sweiss.

And while this is good news for many residents, it is also frustrating that it has taken this long.

A house is surrounded by sandbags on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco on Nov. 28, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

“Sandbags aren’t the answer. The Public Utilities Commission has given us the runaround time and time again, it took the State to step in to solve an issue that has been ongoing for decades,” said Dunseth of Solutions Not Sandbags.

For residents in Mission Terrace who sit in homes fortified by rows of sandbags anxiously anticipating the next rain, it’s now become a waiting game. Will the Alemany sewer, which the city has delayed upgrading for decades, be fixed in time to prevent yet another flood?

“It’s a hard issue of waiting until things settle down with the court system and planning and everything that goes on with that,” said Maria Sanchez. “While in the meantime, we have to sit here in a house that’s pretty much falling down because they can’t get their s— together.”

KQED’s Dan Brekke contributed to this story.

The City College of San Francisco Journalism Department produced this article. This project was supported by California Humanities Emerging Journalist Fellowship Program. For more information, visit www.calhum.org. 

Any views or findings expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of California Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The post ‘It is Been a Combat for Our Houses’: The Ongoing Saga to Repair San Francisco’s Sewers appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco and other cities in California are moving into the “yellow” stage of the COVID pandemic, which means that all previously closed sectors can now be opened. The expansion includes “all activities to a capacity of 50% indoors, provided the state does not require more restrictive capacity limits. If possible, the city will lift restrictions on the number of people participating in activities and relax other operating restrictions. Live spectator events, festivals, meetings, receptions and conventions will also be expanded significantly, ”Mayor London Breed’s office wrote in a press release.

More from the mayor’s office:

The rate of new cases and the very low number of hospitalizations is a direct result of the vaccination effort in San Francisco. To date, 72% of the eligible San Francisco population have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, nearly twice as much as it was six weeks ago when the city moved to the orange row. Additionally, 86% of the city’s residents over 65 have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 73% are fully vaccinated.

San Francisco’s high vaccination rate and relatively low overall COVID rates are the result of strong leadership from health and other officials – and the advanced collaboration of companies that sent employees home at the start of the pandemic. Bay Area residents generally recognized the importance of communication skills and the rate of spread of COVID, and made bold and difficult decisions while other cities hesitated.

Compared to what happened in New York or even Los Angeles, science saved countless lives in 2020 – just as the focus on getting vaccines into arms is now paying off.

Countries around the world continue to suffer from almost unimaginable horrors thanks to COVID. And the Bay Area may not be completely out of the woods yet. But it has been a long time since leaders committed to doing their part to resolve this other ongoing catastrophe: global warming.

Half a world away, in Germany, the heads of state and government announced on Wednesday that they will be emission-free by 2045. Germany has long been electrifying and investing in its rail and transit systems and the renewable energy sources to power them. They are doing everything in their power to make the bicycle the main means of transport in the city and to ban cars in the inner city of Berlin and other cities. Nik Kaestner, a recent Bay Area to Berlin transplant pushing for upgrades to the roundabout near an SFUSD school, was so impressed that he started a blog about these brave efforts.

A street in Berlin, cars away

Readers are undoubtedly aware that similar efforts are being made in Paris and other major European cities to urgently decarbonise.

San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities have made progress during the pandemic, through various open roads and slow road efforts. But sliding back started almost immediately. And unless leaders show the same determination and determination they showed over COVID in the early days of the pandemic, it is a matter of time before this opportunity to point the way to a less polluting future is lost goes.

Maybe it’s too late.

As professor and writer Jason Henderson wrote on Twitter today: “Cars [are] pouring from Marin to San Francisco this morning. This Thursday there will be yellow interior openings. What is the plan? Is there a plan? “He linked up with a story in the Washington Post titled,” NOAA Reveals New US Climate Norms That Are Warmer Than Ever Before. “From That Story:” The big challenge in depicting “normal” climates is that the US climate is no longer stationary as the rise in greenhouse gases pushes temperatures higher and higher. “

And yet, San Francisco continues to debate whether to keep a small portion of the JFK drive in Golden Gate Park car-free in order to preserve a handful of parking spaces.

If you don’t like the coronavirus, you will hate the climate crisis. If we can get the climate emergency under control soon, we can avoid the privations, limitations and disruptions that result from inaction. If we can bend the corona curve, we can bend the carbon curve. pic.twitter.com/ZmXHAo9tqK

– Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) April 27, 2020

A recent poll by Environment California group found that nearly two-thirds of Californians believe the state is not doing enough to combat climate change. Why isn’t there a transit-only lane in the main photo so buses can bypass all traffic? Why is there still no bike or transit lane over the Oakland Bay Bridge? The debate shouldn’t be about whether cars should return to JFK. The debate should be about how the Bay Area can reduce emissions everywhere as quickly as possible.

The pandemic claimed a staggering 578,000 lives in the US and continues to devastate countries around the world. The ongoing global warming crisis threatens to last much longer. There is hope with the election of Joe Biden and a government that appears to be taking climate change seriously. Now the Bay Area must follow the lead of Europe’s big cities and redouble its efforts to build a more sustainable future.

If so, this time around, perhaps the rest of the country will join the San Francisco leadership. Because if the pandemic has underscored anything, it is not good to pay lip service to the warnings of good science or to otherwise ignore them.

The post As Bay Space Reopens, Let’s Concentrate on the Different, Ongoing Disaster – Streetsblog San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

At MX3 Fitness, Kevin Mcspadden was one of the first clients to train indoors on Monday morning. He hasn’t been to a gym since March.

We haven’t seen the following in San Francisco in 6 months: Someone working out in a gym! This is allowed from today – but no group classes. Just one on one training or an individual training. And the gym can only allow 10% of its capacity inside for the time being. pic.twitter.com/tJcGUiGn2J

– Amy Hollyfield (@amyhollyfield) September 14, 2020
“It feels good,” he said between bench presses.

The owner of MX3 Fitness is thrilled to see people back in the house. He had set up an outdoor area for customers while waiting for the city’s permission to open inside. The outdoor exercise room worked fine until smoke covered the city.

“We can’t ignore the air quality, can we? It was really difficult. We’ve had so many outdoor cancellations for our outdoor gym over the past week. So it’s nice to have that other option. But it’s also nice to know.” “The rain is coming. And we’re finally back inside,” said co-owner Dave Karraker.

San Francisco only allows a limited number of people in the gyms and only for one-on-one personal training or individual training. Group fitness classes are still not allowed, leaving some large fitness chains closed.

LIFE AFTER COVID-19: This is what restaurants, gyms, schools, and sports will look like when they reopen

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“Group fitness is still not allowed indoors. So don’t expect to go to your Barry’s boot camp or spin classes just yet. For now, only one-on-one personal training and then individual training is allowed indoors. We expect that . ” Change in the coming months as we do better as a city on our COVID-19 response, but right now it’s only those limited services at 10%, “Karraker said.

He said this new facility was great for his business, but he was fine with the larger training facilities.

“It’s very difficult right now for the big box gyms because they have these huge leases they sit on and 10% doesn’t help them. But 10% for a small neighborhood gym really helps being a little bit outside / doing a little bit inside – can help pay the rent, “Karraker said.

WATCH: This is what San Francisco’s indoor gym looks like amid the pandemic

His personal trainers were fully booked on Monday, an indication that many San Franciscans are ready to be back.

“Everyone I know in my community has always wanted to go to the gym. It’s one of the two things they talk about – going to restaurants and going back to the gym. I think it’s good and important.” Mcspadden said.

Some salon and gym owners, like Karraker, said they will continue to provide outdoor service to customers who are uncomfortable with being indoors with others.

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Tracy Chavez owns Eye Candy SF. She crossed Union Street with a sign in her hand and was thrilled to be reopening her beauty salon.

“So happy to be back, so happy to be able to open again. I’m really excited,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to everyone coming back and I’ve missed everyone so much. It’s been a busy year but we’re going through.”

Chavez had to move in with her family because she couldn’t afford to stay where she lived.

The salon is now set up to keep the recommended number of clients at a distance, and Chavez complies with the requirements by wearing a mask, face shield, and specialized clothing.

Tracy Stanwick is another salon owner eager to reopen.

“It’s been stressful, but we’re all happy. It’s also a relief for our customers,” said Stanwick. The first customer of the day has already been served in her salon.

COVID-19 Diaries: Small Business Owners Discuss The Impact Of The Coronavirus Pandemic – COVID-19 Diaries

“Months and months and months. I’m so happy to be here,” said the customer.

Everyone told us the city had waited too long for it to reopen.

Danielle Rabkin, owner of Cross Fit Golden Gate, agrees.

“We saw counties like San Diego and Los Angeles reopen, but San Francisco, which had much better metrics, stayed closed and that was really hard to see.

RELATED: SF Business Owners Look Forward to Reopening After Losing Thousands of Dollars on Shutdown

Gyms may only be opened with a capacity of 10%. Rabkin says the majority of her clients, young tech professionals, have moved out of town.

“I don’t know if I can recover from six months of closure but I’m going to fight like hell, I sure will try,” Rabkin said.

Hotels were also allowed to attract tourists for the first time today. Still, some hotels decided to wait a few days, knowing that few people would be willing to visit San Francisco under these conditions.

INTERACTIVE: Here’s the reopening status of each county in the Bay Area

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The post Reopening California: San Francisco salons, gyms, therapeutic massage studios, tattoo parlors reopen for indoor providers amid ongoing COVID-19 pandemic appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.