The San José/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant is the largest advanced wastewater treatment…More facility on the West Coast. The Plant protects our health, Bay and economy by cleaning the wastewater from more than 1.4 million residents and 17,000 main business sewer connections in eight South Bay cities — San José, Santa Clara, Milpitas, Cupertino, Campbell, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and Saratoga.</p> <p>Water used in showers, sinks and toilets travels to the Plant through the sanitary sewer system, which is a large underground network of pipelines. The Plant uses three stages of treatment: physical, which uses gravity to settle out solids from wastewater; biological, which uses bacteria to eat trace organics in the wastewater; and chemical, which douses the wastewater with chlorine and then removes the chlorine, which could be harmful to fish.</p> <p>The Plant treats 110 million gallons of wastewater per day, with the capacity to treat 167 million gallons per day. About 90 percent of this cleaned wastewater is discharged into the southern San Francisco Bay; 10 percent is further cleaned by South Bay Water Recycling for use as recycled water in irrigation, industrial processes and toilet plumbing for large buildings.</p> <p>The Plant is located in north San José between the Bay and Highway 237, with the Alviso community on the west and the City of Milpitas on the east. The cities of San José and Santa Clara co-own the Plant and San José operates and manages it.</p> <p>The Plant was built in 1956 and has since been named National Plant of the Year for operational excellence by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It won a Green California Leadership Award for its leadership in energy innovations and was included on the EPA's top-ten listing of private and public entities that produce and use alternative energy on site. The Plant meets two-thirds of its energy needs with biogas (methane) produced in on-site digester tanks and from the adjacent landfill, with a goal of becoming energy self-sufficient.</p> <p><b>Learn more about the Plant:</b></p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.rebuildtheplant.org/go/doc/1823/258436">Take a free two-hour bus tour of the Plant</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.rebuildtheplant.org/go/doc/1823/253361">Participate in the process to plan the Plant's future</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.rebuildtheplant.org/go/doc/1823/432663/">Watch a video on the Plant's treatment process</a></li> </ul>