Comment by geebee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geebee | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco has a similar problem to the one described in Pittsburg. We use an old, single pipe, gravity based system that carries both storm water and sewage. When it rains heavily, the system backs up at various bottlenecks. Unfortunately, some of these are in heavily populated and residential areas, which get flooded with human waste. Even areas not at the bottlenecks may see more mild drainage backups.

Sadly, SF has done a pretty bad job managing this:

http://www.sfweekly.com/news/shit-storm-why-wont-sf-stop-flo...

SF's esponse to this problem has shaken my confidence in the city's governance. SF is going in the opposite direction from what is suggested in this article - we are paving over (with non-permeable surfacing) more than ever. The common practice of paving over your front year for extra parking is generally illegal, but like most quality of life issues in SF, enforcement is so rare that the city created an entitlement - and it has become the norm in some neighborhoods.

I know some people my chuckle that this particular issue would cause me to question SF's government, considering what is going on. But I think it's the straightforward nature of this - the clear engineering failure, the cause and effect between excessive paving and storm system overflow, the unenforced legislation to curtail it, the massive city budget and projects without adequate funding for critical infrastructure... it's the mundane failures that really drive home how badly SF's government is handling serious problems.

Amsterdam has this problem as well, it is now generally discouraged to pave your garden. Moreover projects using the "rain away tile" are popping up: http://rainaway.nl/

And also a the term "tegel-tax" (tile-tax) is introduced. The idea is to tax real estate based on the amount of non-permeable surface it has. More non-permeable surface resulting in a higher tax bill. Satellite & plane imaging combined with computational analysis would enable enforcement.

Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) represent a big problem that is not technically difficult to address. The issue is only money and political will.

We have a great example in Maine of how well CSOs can be addressed and minimized in the twin-cities of Saco and Biddeford. These two municipalities face each other across the Saco River and have separate waste water systems. They both have historical issues with CSOs and have been working to address them.

Saco worked quickly, spent a ton of money, and raised a lot of fees to upgrade their sewer infrastructure to minimize CSOs into the Saco River. They are largely complete with that work and total CSOs has dropped to under 1 million gallons per year[0] estimated, and only 600k gallons in 2016[1] (highly dependent on rainfall).

Biddeford has been slower off the block, to be honest I'm not sure what they've accomplished although I know they've made progress. I believe a recent large Main Street reconstruction included CSO work. Their CSO discharge rate sits around 20-40 million gallons year year[1].

One big difference is that Saco charges an CSO impact fee on new sewer volume, currently $11.27 per rated gallon[2]. I'm pretty sure that Biddeford doesn't charge a CSO fee at all, at least it's not detailed on their wastewater permit application.

A community is a reflection of it's citizen values. Care about CSOs? Talk about them, build consensus, and raise money to deal with them. There will always be someone complaining about the municipal fees to build and live in a particular community, don't let those individuals dictate the narrative and thereby the world you live in.

It's easier to see your impact in a small community (like Saco, ME) as compared to a large community (like San Francisco, CA), I get that. Don't get discouraged, keep working.

[0]http://courier.mainelymediallc.com/news/2017-11-09/News/Saco...

[1]http://www.maine.gov/dep/water/cso/2016_status_report.pdf

[2]http://www.sacomaine.org/departments/water_resource_recovery...

> not technically difficult to address

While the concepts may not be difficult, the scale often is.

See the Milwaukee deep tunnel system, storing 521 million gallons in 28.5 miles of tunnel.

https://www.mmsd.com/what-we-do/wastewater-treatment/deep-tu...

But it does work: https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2014/06/12/murphys-law-the-remark...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan

Chicago's blows that away. 17.5 billion gallons of storage, 110 miles of tunnels. I think it's the largest current public works project in the US.

Yep, definitely. I brought up Milwaukee because I have a better understanding of it and its effects. As hard as 521 million gallons is to visualize, 17.5 billion gallons is. . . 34 times worse.

Totally, the scale can be outrageous. As you mentioned, Milwaukee's system is huge - but it works.

"Too Big, Will Fail" is a pretty common refrain from anti-infrastructure personalities, but when it comes to simple civil engineering projects it doesn't matter what the scale is if the mechanism is proven. Solving CSOs isn't the Hyperloop, it's just building a bathtub big enough in the right place and figuring out how to drain it appropriately when it fills up.

Milwaukee, Chicago - these are examples that prove that stormwater management is a solved problem. So let's apply that solution to places where the problem still exists.

Anyways, cool link, I didn't know about Milwaukee's system.

As a kid I thought of the Bay Area & San Francisco as progressive & environmentally friendly. When it comes to the cities themselves and not just which President they voted for, was it that way in decades past, or was this never the case?

Never.

In decades past they voted for Nixon.

Every demographic has ideological blind spots. For example, Republicans are generally for reduced government spending...except that when it comes to cars, they favor extremely expensive infrastructure.

The San Francisco board of supervisors and most of the voting public would almost certainly declare themselves to be progressive and environmentally friendly, and I don't think they are cynical or manipulative here. They really mean it, and believe they mean it.

The problem is where policy becomes enforcement. San Francisco, I believe, isn't good at translating intent into reality.

Pave overs are actually a good example. San Francisco has very specifically illegalized front yard pave-overs, and the board of supervisors voted to increase the fines. However, very little budget (in a massive, massive city budget for a city SF's size) is allocated to enforcement. They're also in a bind now, as they have allowed the practice to go on so long, with such light enforcement, that it's going to be difficult to roll it back.

Another experience I had was replacing my windows with energy efficient, double pane, insulated windows. The Bush administration (George W) created a tax credit for energy efficient home improvements. Gavin Newsom, SF's liberal mayor at the time, talked quite a bit about about the importance of "Green" San Francisco.

Gavin Newsom's San Francisco collected permit fees that more or less confiscated George W Bush's federal tax incentives to encourage energy efficiency. Savor that for a moment. Ironic, isn't it? But to me, this story, along with the pave-over debacle, kind of gets at how SF goes wrong on so many things.

Thanks. That makes it sound like this is all yet another victim of budget failures. Good intentions, but never enough money for basic programs, and a government always hungry for more revenue.

San Francisco also has the Front Yard Ambassador Program. This encourages homeowners to replace concrete in their front yard with plants. The City helps defray the costs. The goal of this program is to reduce runoff.

http://sfbos.org/supervisor-tang-front-yard-ambassadors-prog...

I have reservations about this program even though I hope it is a success.

The program provides partial funding and reduced permit fees if homeowners arrange for at least four houses on a block to remove the concrete. Citizens are encouraged to become “ambassadors” and knock on neighbors doors and try to convince them to remove it. If the citizen fails to get enough neighbors on board? No funding.

To me, this program takes an issue of permit enforcement of critical importance to the infrastructure and pushes it out to people with zero authority, and asks them to knock on doors, explain the law, and ask if they’ll please consider complying with permits.

The government gets to duck the awkward business of enforcing a law that turned into an entitlement, while pretending to do something ang getting a smiling feel good photo op (win win!)

Meanwhile, where I live, pave overs continue apace with no apparent enforcement at all. Houses flood with raw sewage. In one recent storm, a dog was electrocuted in the flooded garage. This area is one of the few parts of sf with a high percentage of children, including lower income children.

It turns out the government does need to establish and enforce sensible laws.

As is often the case - the truth is more complex.

That said: it’s often that the Bay is more socially progressive than fiscally or infrastructurally.

Plus they’re just shit at getting things done (often due to NIMBYism).

Hah, I had not thought to separate out social progressiveness from infrastructure progressiveness. That's a good point, they in no way have to go hand in hand.

What’s wrong with parking on grass? Why do people feel a need to pave?

Parking on the grass kills the grass, and dead grass eventually turns into mud when it rains, and mud eventually gets your car stuck. People often use gravel to prevent this, which is permeable, but you need to add fresh gravel every year or so.

I have this childhood memory of parking spaces made of concrete tiles with holes in them, with grass growing through the holes. Now I finally know what they're for :)

Gravel is only permeable with permeable undersurface. This is usually not the case, because non-permeable plastics are used to prevent weed from growing in gravel area.

There are water permeable barriers that resist weeds too. It’s solvable.

Those surfaces are quite a bit more expensive than asphalt, so most companies won't put them in unless they are incentivized through something like a non-permeable surface tax.

True, it's up to the people involved. My point was more that it's possible

Thee are numerous drivable grass products specifically made for driving/parking on grass.

Really? I've looked for something like this in the past for my driveway, but come up empty handed. Are you able to share any of the product names with me? I would love to have something like this.

Apparently they're called "grass parking mats"

Here's an Australian product: https://www.grassreinforcement.com.au/

Here's another one: https://www.bunnings.com.au/cirtex-surepave-plastic-pavers_p...

It can also be called grass reinforcement mesh or grass pavers. Another cool approach is doing pavers with grass joints.

If you lay the gravel properly, (i.e. get it rolled when it's first laid), and give it a bit of cursory maintenance (raking it once a week), it should last a long time without you needing to add any more gravel, or at most adding a bag of gravel once a year.

Once it rains, that grass turns to mud and anyone without a 4x4 is hopelessly stuck.

You people must be terrible drivers or have a sufficiently liberal definition of "grass" to include most swamps.

More work to maintain and there’s a risk of getting stuck in the mud after a rain.

Indeed parking on grass is the best solution for this problem. We learned it at our city planning course decades ago already. You some amount of concrete but not 100% as of now.

Not to mention, having a grass lawn in the Bay Area is a major social taboo due to water conservationism. You get more props paving than planting in my neighborhood (as long as you pave expensively).

Pavement vs Lawn is a bit of a false dilemma, though. Nobody in SurfRider's "plant don't pave" campaign is advocating lawns. In fact, they advocate against lawns. There are low (or no) water, drought resistant, often native plants that will preserve the soil filter, which is crucial for a lot of reasons (storm overflows, sewage bottlenecks, pollution from runoff into the bay and ocean).

Also, pave-overs are illegal in San Francisco - the problem is that the law is generally unenforced. Enforcement is complaint driven, and there's a huge backlog.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Paved-over-S-F-yards-r...

Wait - you’re not allowed to park in your own driveway, even if not blocking the sidewalk? Am I reading this right? Enclosed garages only?

(I sort of understand not being able to convert lawn to concrete parking space, but this seems much more draconian).

A driveway is fine, but the rest of the front yard should be unpaved.

They advocate against lawns, and you can't park on typical "native" gardens (typically a lot of dirt, and some scrub brush), thus you are left with paving as the parking friendly eco-acceptable option. Or astroturf, but not sure how much better that drains than concrete.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com