{"id":445346,"date":"2026-02-02T21:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T21:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/445346\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T21:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T21:39:10","slug":"odors-at-bayviews-sewage-treatment-center-are-fading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/445346\/","title":{"rendered":"Odors at Bayview’s Sewage Treatment Center are fading"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the Southeast Treatment Plant in Bayview, where nearly 80 percent of San Francisco\u2019s wastewater<\/a> is treated, residents say a strong smell hung over the neighborhood for about 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was real bad,\u201d said Cynthia Yannacone, who has lived in Bayview since 2004. \u201cIt\u2019s like a bathroom, you know, it was really nasty.\u201d When her cousin visited, she said he would often joke, \u201cI know I\u2019m close to the house because of the smell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mission<\/p>\n

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Keyanna Johnson agreed. \u201cYou could smell it blocks away,\u201d driving off the freeway and onto the streets near the plant, the 20-year-old resident said. \u201cEven if your windows are up and your vents are closed, you\u2019re still gagging in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in September of last year, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission finished a $717 million project to upgrade the plant\u2019s headworks, where wastewater first travels for treatment.<\/p>\n

Yannacone, who lives less than a mile away from the plant, said she\u2019s noticed a reduction in smell compared to years past: She joked that her cousin will soon be lost visiting her home without the odor to mark the way. \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to find his way to our house anymore,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The headworks help remove debris, trash or grit from the wastewater, ensuring that pipes aren\u2019t damaged as the water travels through the system. The renovation upgraded the decades-old infrastructure. Also in progress: Upgrades to the plant\u2019s sewage digesters, which convert organic waste \u2014 urine and excrement, in this case \u2014 into biogas, but give off an odor in the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those projects are two of six in a $5 billion-plus plan to upgrade the Southeast Treatment Plant, the largest and oldest wastewater treatment facility in the city. Other upgrades include new operations, engineering, maintenance buildings and a nutrient reduction project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been an aesthetic change, too. Neon green tubes were painted over in \u201ca vibrant pattern of muted blues and greens designed to evoke the wastewater cleaning process,\u201d according to the public utilities commission\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

\"IndustrialThe tubes painted a \u201cmuted blue\u201d at the Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant. Photo by Sophia Rerucha.<\/p>\n

The city said the upgrades have been a long time coming. Nancy Crowley, the press secretary for the Public Utilities Commission, said that \u201csince the mid-1990s, city staff knew the sewage digesters were aging and causing odor complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n

Residents say it has been too long coming. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised at all that it\u2019s taken this long,\u201d said Alijah Mestayer-Orollo, who works in Candlestick and Heron\u2019s Head as an ecotechnician for the nonprofit Literacy for Environmental Justice. \u201cI feel like the city doesn\u2019t prioritize Bayview-Hunter\u2019s Point. It\u2019s not on their top list. Over here, people have to fight for what they believe in more so than other neighborhoods.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

CalEnviroScreen<\/a>, a tool used to measure the effects of pollution in California, shows that the area surrounding the treatment plant is a bright red \u2014 indicating the highest (worst) pollution above the 90th percentile. The rest of the city, save the Tenderloin and Treasure Island, is a healthy green.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t even know how much we are exposed to, been exposed to and continue to be,\u201d said Yannacone, referring to pollution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Markos Major, founding director of the group Climate Action Now!<\/a>, said that in the United States writ large, industry is built in the southeastern corners of cities because of prevailing winds, which push pollution to the southeast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AChimney at the Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant. Photo by Sophia Rerucha. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you put it in the Richmond District, all the pollution would be blowing through town. Now it just blows into the Bay and goes to Hayward and stays in Bayview,\u201d said Major. In San Francisco, the historically Black neighborhoods were largely in the southeast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were Black people that were predominantly living up on this hill because the city displaced them from other places,\u201d said Arieanne Harrison, founder of the Marie Harrison Foundation and a longtime Bayview resident. <\/p>\n

Still, the difference is tangible. The city\u2019s website<\/a> says the project \u201csignificantly reduces odors with new advanced odor technology.\u201d But some residents are still catching whiffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just yesterday when I smelled it,\u201d said Mestayer-Orollo. \u201cIt\u2019s not smelly all the time, but there\u2019s definitely a couple days in a row where it\u2019s still hella smelly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison said the smell comes in waves because of wind gusts, the heat or proximity to the treatment plants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get a good gust of wind,\u201d she said, even after the upgrades, \u201cyou might smell urine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the Southeast Treatment Plant in Bayview, where nearly 80 percent of San Francisco\u2019s wastewater is treated, residents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[45893,1075,192,5599,79],"class_list":["post-445346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-bayview-hunters-point","tag-community","tag-environment","tag-public-health","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}