Protecting our Creeks, Rivers, and the Bay From Pollution

A second way that water and pollutants get into the Bay is from the indoor drains in our homes. Water from our indoor drains flows into the sanitary sewer. In the Santa Clara Valley, sanitary sewers carry the wastewater from well over one million residents to the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant.
This sewage treatment plant and two others in the Valley prevent the virtual destruction of the South Bay that would be caused by the wastewater flowing from so many people. For most pollutants, the sewage treatment plants clean our wastewater so that the water leaving the plant surpasses drinking water standards for those pollutants. But portions of some pollutants do pass into the Bay. Click here to see what not to put down your sinks and drains.
So our treated wastewater is pretty high quality water. Great! Right? Well yes, but the plant discharges over 100 million gallons of this treated wastewater into the South San Francisco Bay everyday. This volume of water, which is not salty, dilutes the saltiness of the Bay water. This lessening of the saltiness of the water affects the type of plants growing in the salt marshes. One kind of plant, pickleweed, is needed for two endangered species to survive in our South Bay. These are the salt marsh harvest mouse and the California clapper rail. Their home is threatened by too much of our treated wastewater.

Waste water doesn't just go away,
it drains to our creeks and bay!