Plant Master Plan Open House

The City is taking public outreach for the WPCP master plan update very seriously. The Environmental Services Department pulled out all the stops, bringing in many buses for tours

and putting up two big tents in the parking lot, for mingling and the presentation.

Inside, there was lots of printed matter.

(click through if you want to read all the water no-nos.

Most of the people I talked to were there for the tour. They had tried to sign up last year, but couldn’t get a spot. I got on the first bus (since I was there so early) and we were lucky to have the marvelous Matt Krupp as our tour guide.

After the tour, we watched a very professional presentation, narrated by ESD Director John Stufflebean, that laid out the issues that the master plan outreach process wants public input on.

Now, the biggest issue in this show is that the plant itself is getting old, and needs serious upgrades. That’s the heart of the matter, and you’ll get no argument from me that the upgrades are necessary. As I said the other day, the last thing you want to have fail is your sewage treatment plant. Matt put it that one of the most important functions provided by a modern society is wastewater treatment. It’s the reason that no one in the US knows what cholera looks like anymore.

Of course, these very necessary upgrades will cost in the neighborhood of 1 billion dollars (insert Dr. Evil voice, if you want,) and paying for them is going to be another question entirely. That’s why I was happy to see Pierluigi Oliverio blog that the SCVWD had finally come to an understanding with the City of San José about greater use of recycled water for groundwater recharge and streamflow augmentation.

But it’s the land use issues where public opinion will matter, at least I hope so. The plant controls 2,600 acres of land, a fraction of which (180 acres) is devoted to the actual plant, a larger fraction of which (770 acres) is used for sludge drying, and the rest of which is either a salt pond or buffer lands. More modern sludge drying methods (yes, research goes on in all sorts of fields) may make a big chunk of the “biosolids” area available for other uses, and more modern processes in general should reduce the odor of the plants operations to the point that less buffer would be needed to shield neighbors from the plant. The interactive portion of the program had each of the 80-odd people who remained after the break (in summer heat, I should add) using clickers to register their opinions about operational, economic, environmental and social aspects of land use.

When they’re available, those results will be up at the plant master plan homepage. But I’ll summarize them.

Not surprisingly, the operational aspects of the plan upgrade aren’t much being left to public opinion. (There is a technical advisory committee, which John Stufflebean and the head of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Board both said was full of their professors from 30 years ago, to weigh in on those questions.) The audience with clickers was asked whether the plant upgrade should incorporate “architectural amenities,” and that was it. A majority said “some” of these would be good, but that was the first question, and, as I’ll get to, I’m not sure how strong this opinion was. I was thinking as I walked into the building this afternoon that the plant looks just like my high school (it was probably built around the same time) in its mid-sixties concrete vibe. For the record, it’s an industrial facility, and I don’t mind its looking like one.

Then the discussion turned to economic uses of the land. We were told that there will be development of WPCP land; the only question is how much and what kind. I have two issues with this. 1) Who has decided? The mayor and the council? Staff? I need to get a better idea of where this mandate originates. 2) I think that San José has a terrible record of developing parcels hoping for economic reward. The city is going to retain ownership of this land, so the city will make the decision of what will be built. I do not think that city staff are the best people to be making detailed development decisions.

Plus, as the drive up Zanker Road showed, there is a huge glut of empty industrial space in north San José. Now, I know that the master plan is supposed to govern the next 30 years, and the recession will end. But once land is built out, it’s gone. I really want to know where the development pressure is coming from within the city and who will make the decisions about what is built.

The question on this topic was phrased “Do you support green, sustainable development?” Not, “Do you support any development at all?” A majority of responders did support green development, not surprisingly. Similar majorities supported using some of the land for solar energy generation.

A majority also favored either some, or a large portion of the land be used for habitat restoration. This is my preferred outcome, as you’ve probably guessed. A majority also supported increasing the area of plant lands under water, in the sense of wetlands enhancement, rather than inundation due to sea-level rise.

A majority rejected retail or commercial development on the site, and a majority favored building a vistors’ center that would offer educational programs. Trails and water access were favored a majority, but sports fields were not as popular.

Finally, we were asked to rank our priorities. Given the levels of interest in several of the questions, I expected to see a clear majority, but the vote seemed to be equal percentages for

• architectural amenities
• green development
• habitat restoration
• recreational amenities
• an educational center

But, this question was asked a different way. We were asked to press our clicker buttons in order, ranking our preferences, instead of having separate questions of “What is your first priority?” etc.” So many people were confused that I am sure that the reason that each choice scored equally is that the answers were random.

So, the same questions are going to go up on the web, and I’d like each reader to go vote. I’ll post when the questions are available.

The good news is that almost everyone said they’d like to participate in further workshops. (The clickers are very engaging.) This is a very important process; please consider taking part in the next chance you get.