After a vocal campaign, Loma Portal residents have succeeded in protecting a neighborhood canyon from the city’s bulldozers. The Metropolitan Wastewater Department (MWWD) has agreed to use non-invasive methods to repair a dilapidated concrete pipe that runs the Alcott Street canyon’s length. The environmentally friendly work is slated to begin on Monday, May 15.

The small urban canyon in question is roughly half the size of a city block and is located on a city-owned paper street, or a street that was never developed due to its topography.
Last November, MWWD crews razed the bottom portion of the canyon in order to reach and replace a failing underground sewer pipe. More than a dozen small trees and a towering, four-story-tall eucalyptus were removed in the process. The city claimed that two sewage spills during the previous eight months constituted an emergency and necessitated the extreme measures.
Nonetheless, residents with homes bordering the once lush oasis were outraged. Throughout December, they pressured the city to leave the remaining section of the canyon in tact and finish the rest of their work without the mass removal of vegetation.
Multiple community meetings, phone calls to the MWWD and Councilman Kevin Faulconer and a supporting vote by the Peninsula Community Planning Board eventually led to an agreement that the city would halt work until a consensus was reached.
“We’re fortunate that the community came out and let their opinion be known that open trench digging in an area like this was unacceptable,” said Chris Toth, deputy director of wastewater collections.
In January, Faulconer took responsibility for finding a reasonable solution and has since played a pivotal role in doing so.
“It was something that I was confronted with literally the first week on the job, but immediately [I] recognized that this is a bigger issue that impacts so many other areas,” Faulconer said.
His District 2 office has served as the liaison between residents and MWWD staff, facilitating meetings and updating the community of any progress. The resulting solution agreed upon by all parties entails two different projects. The first will be to finish the abandoned work in the lower, stripped portion of the canyon. According to Toth, crews are currently replacing the remaining section of old pipe by the original method of digging, or trenching.
The second project will take place in the upper, intact portion of the canyon. There, a city contractor will repair the pipe without trenching. Zondiros Corporation plans to use an Insituform fiberglass lining that will be inserted in the pipe, expanded, heated and cured. The liner will enter through a manhole at the top of the canyon and exit through another manhole about halfway down the hill.
“It’s sort of like a big sock,” Toth said of the technique. “Once they have the liner inserted, then basically they add hot water to the pipe.”
The hardened resin seals off any holes, but also closes the three lateral connections from the houses above. Toth said the contractor will first try to robotically reconnect those pipes to the main line, but might be restricted by the pipe’s small diameter. The current pipe is only 6 inches wide, and the lining could reduce that diameter by an additional 0.25 to 0.5 inches. Should the internal approach prove infeasible, the contractor will hand dig down to the connection.
“The pipe is such a small diameter we don’t necessarily believe they will be successful in being able to do that all from within the pipe,” Toth said. He added that the city does not typically consider lining methods for such small pipes.
That may soon change.
The MWWD is planning a peninsula-wide project to repair aging pipes in unofficial canyons. According to Ann Sasaki, the department’s deputy director of engineering and program management, there are more than 1.6 miles of sewer lines in these areas, most of which are concrete, 70 to 80 years old and dilapidated. And while the city’s main concern is updating the infrastructure, Faulconer has seized the opportunity to encourage non-destructive methods for all repairs of this nature.
“My goal is to ensure that what happened in the bottom of this canyon never happens again in any other canyons,” Faulconer said, adding that the city has been “very receptive to his prodding.”
In fact, Faulconer has won the support of Mayor Jerry Sanders. The councilman gave the mayor a guided tour of District 2 on April 21, which included a stop in Loma Portal.
“[The MWWD] needs to be much more environmentally sensitive than they are now,” Sanders said after seeing the bare canyon.
Sasaki estimated that the proposed project for the rest of the peninsula could be ready for construction within 18 months, pending the availability of city funds. She is now working to identify all the pipes that need replacing, which should conclude by June. Each canyon will then be assessed to determine what methods are reasonable and cost-effective, and if the pipes need to be upsized. There is no uniform solution, she said.
“If we could find some less invasive methods that would be economical and not cost significantly more than conventional open trench, yes, that’s something we would look at,” Sasaki said. She emphasized that funding will ultimately determine how the project is executed.
Though work on the remaining section of the Alcott Street canyon has yet to begin, resident Paul Reeb is pleased with the outcome. He said initial communication with the city was a “nightmare,” but that so far the process has been much smoother with Faulconer’s help.
“Kevin Faulconer’s office has been in constant contact with us for every step,” Reeb said. He also credited the MWWD with heeding the local concerns.
“The government and the community were able to work together to solve the problem,” Reeb continued. “It will help a lot of people in the future.”