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Aiko Chikaba first toured a wastewater treatment facility with her elementary school class in Japan. Now a resident of Burlingame, she jumped at the chance to bring her 14-year-old son to see the place where their sewage is treated.
“It was fascinating, and was great learning for me — young me,” Chikaba said. “So I wanted to give him the same opportunity.”
During Silicon Valley Clean Water’s (SVCW) first free public tour on Wednesday, June 17, a group of 10 residents expressed enthusiasm about seeing the wastewater treatment systems in action.
After being flushed down the toilet, over 15 million gallons of water per day — enough to fill almost 23 Olympic-sized swimming pools — flow through a network of underground pipes to SVCW in Redwood Shores for treatment before being released into the San Francisco Bay. In the receiving lift station, a cavernous, 90-foot-tall chamber, six pipes each pump a hot tub’s worth of water per second into the facility’s headworks, where large pieces of trash like wipes, bandages, and feminine hygiene products are removed, and solid organic matter is made into a sludge that later becomes fertilizer.
The partially cleaned water then undergoes a multi-step biological process where microorganisms are deployed to eat the water-soluble waste. Finally, the water is chemically disinfected with chlorine.
Tour participant Fred Ulrich looks into a bin of rags, a category of waste including wipes, during a tour of Silicon Valley Clean Water’s wastewater treatment facility in Redwood City on June 17, 2026. Photo by Seeger Gray. 
The receiving lift station at Silicon Valley Clean Water’s wastewater treatment facility in Redwood City on June 17, 2026. Photo by Seeger Gray. 
AIko Chikaba and son Rui Pierre tour Silicon Valley Clean Water’s wastewater treatment facility with staff in Redwood City on June 17, 2026. Photo by Seeger Gray.
But the facility does more than clean sewer water. Some of it undergoes extra treatment for use as recycled water that can irrigate lawns and fill toilets to reduce the use of drinking water. During digestion, the facility produces a large amount of methane gas, which is repurposed to generate about 65% of its energy needs, lowering SVCW’s power bill by $18 million per year.
Matt Zucca, the facility’s authority manager, said SVCW offered ad-hoc tours before the pandemic, but did not have a formal program with a set route. As of this month, tours are open to the public monthly.
While SVCW serves over 300,000 customers in Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood City and cities in the West Bay Sanitary District (Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside, Portola Valley, and parts of East Palo Alto), many longtime residents know little about a “substantial expense on the sewer bill” — wastewater treatment at SVCW — said Zucca, who previously served as the assistant director of the City of Palo Alto’s utilities department. That includes his own wife. When he applied to work at SVCW last year, she, who has lived in the Bay Area her entire life, asked him why he wanted to commute all the way to Sunnyvale from their home in Belmont. “No, no,” he told her, “it’s in Redwood Shores.”
“We’re able to live in this area, in the Peninsula, with this level of population density, and a relatively healthy Bay, because of what this plant does,” Zucca said. “Starting to understand that nexus is important, and advances the understanding of what this plant does. You can’t do that without tours and getting the public engaged.”
Zucca said another goal is to allow residents to feel a sense of scale that can only come from viewing the facility’s large machines in person.
Silicon Valley Clean Water authority manager Matt Zucca leads a tour on a walkway between aeration basins at Silicon Valley Clean Water’s wastewater treatment facility in Redwood City on June 17, 2026. Photo by Seeger Gray. 
The headworks building at Silicon Valley Clean Water’s wastewater treatment facility in Redwood City on June 17, 2026. Photo by Seeger Gray. 
An aeration basin at Silicon Valley Clean Water’s wastewater treatment facility in Redwood City on June 17, 2026. Photo by Seeger Gray.
Rui Pierre, Chikaba’s son, said he enjoyed being able to see the enormous structures. The incoming high school freshman said his favorite apparatus was the aeration basins, expansive tanks where operators add microbes and oxygen to the wastewater to break down debris and consume organic matter.
Fred Ulrich said he wanted to come on the tour to be able to witness the facility’s operations for himself.
“I like to understand how things work,” the Burlingame resident said. “I can digest all of this information, but I just like to see this kind of stuff.”
Zucca said that providing pathways for public engagement could help secure investments to revamp the facility’s infrastructure. SVCW has already made a number of expensive renovations, one being a $580 million RESCU program that included redoing the tunnel in the receiving lift station. To comply with the nutrient permit passed in 2023, which regulates the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus the facility can leave in treated water that’s discharged into the Bay, Zucca said SVCW expects to need “a significant capital investment” of about $320 million.
“In the absence of a tour and a public engagement, they just see a cost,” Zucca said. “So we’re trying to provide a counterweight to the, ‘If I’m spending $1,000 or whatever it is a year on sewer bills, what am I getting for it?’”
Tours take place every third Wednesday of the month from 10 a.m. to noon. The facility is located at 1400 Radio Road in Redwood City. To schedule a tour, go to svcw.org/what-we-do/facilities or call 650-591-7121 or email tours@svcw.org.
