Does more Bay Area rain mean it's time to rethink rain management? San Francisco should start looking at wastewater as the windfall it is
The Bay Area was lashed by a second wave of wet weather this week, slicking streets, downing trees, toppling gas stations, and flooding businesses and homes. But as the winter storms drenched the region in rapid succession, they brought with them questions of whether cities like San Francisco are doing enough to take advantage of the wet weather in an increasingly arid state.
But not all parts of The City dispel or absorb water equally. Most of San Francisco is served by a combined storm sewer system, where stormwater, along with residential and commercial sewage, is directed to treatment plants before being released to the San Francisco Bay or the Pacific Ocean. Still, Hooper’s home weathered this recent pounding of precipitation relatively unscathed, illustrating that sometimes surviving the deluge comes down to the luck of the draw. But that luck ran out for residents living in the Mission and near Folsom, with severe flooding swamping businesses and basements.
“These were warmer storms,” said David Rizzardo, hydrology section manager at the Department of Water Resources, at a press conference this week. Rizzardo was referring to the atmospheric river that walloped Northern California over the New Year, noting the storms “were much more rain than snow.” “Now that we're experiencing more extreme droughts and more frequent droughts or longer dry periods, we are being reminded over and over that this is our reality,” she said. “And we have to be more strategic about the time we have wet periods rather than constantly trying to react to dry periods.”
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