S.F. gets big EPA loan to upgrade sewage plant
San Francisco has received a $699 million low-interest loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help offset the costs of modernizing its wastewater treatment facility.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will use the loan — the largest granted under the EPA’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, or WIFIA — to help finance the Southeast Treatment Plant Biosolids Digester Facilities Project. The project will renovate the city’s 60-year-old solid-wastewatertreatment facilities, according to a Thursday statement from environmental engineering and construction firm Brown and Caldwell, which is leading the project.
The Southeast Treatment Plant is located in BayviewHunters Point and is the larg-
est wastewater facility in the city. Once the upgrades are complete, the facility will be able to transform wastewater solids into high-quality biosolids that could be used as fertilizer, or biogas, which can be used to produce heat or electricity.
The upgraded digesters will also be located farther away from existing residences, have advanced odor control and will be more resilient in earthquakes.
“Rebuilding our biosolids digester facilities is crucial to realizing our vision to transform San Francisco’s largest wastewater treatment plant into a modern resource recovery facility,” Harlan L. Kelly Jr., the PUC’s general manager, said in a statement when the loan was announced last month. “With the federal government’s low-cost loan program, we can realize significant savings for our ratepayers and create high quality employment and contracting opportunities in parts of the city that need it most.”
The SFPUC received the largest loan issued under the WIFIA program to date, according to the EPA.
The project is estimated to cost $1.43 billion. Construction is expected to begin early next year with the facilities operational by 2025.