City of LA's Oldest Treatment Plant!

I'm in Los Angeles right now, my old home town, and one interesting place that I have wanted to visit since I was in my 20s is the LA Hyperion Plant. At that time (years have passed and I am a LOT older now), you needed a group of ten or more to sign up for a visit. I had a great deal of trouble rounding up that many friends to visit a sewer plant, so never got my tour. Funny, now living in Los Osos, I would have NO trouble doing that......

Hyperion is LA's oldest and largest wastewater treatment plant, beginning operations in 1894. In 2014 it treats 350 million gallons a day.

Read about it here:
http://www.lasewers.org/treatment_plants/hyperion/

Off this page there is a link to take a virtual tour. DO NOT MISS THIS! It is pretty amazing!

Be sure to click the image on that same page that will give you a large overview of the entire plant. Los Osians might want to notice that just east of the plant, really, right next to it, are HUNDREDS of homes. (Look at my new desktop image to see what I mean!)

Some fun facts plucked from the virtual tour:


The daily output "...would fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools."

"The plant can treat up to 1000 million gallons per day."

"Screw pumps lift the treated primary effluent high enough so it can take the remainder of its trip through the treatment process by gravity. These are the largest wastewater- related Archimedes screw pumps in the world."

"About 250 tons of liquid oxygen per day are sent to the reactor tanks in the secondary treatment process to help the bacteria grow."

"Hyperion has the largest field of egg-shaped digesters in the world."

"…about 8 million cubic feet of biogas is converted to energy each day."

"The biosolids that come out of the digesters are very wet – about the consistency of toothpaste." (Lovely image, that.)


If you are in LA and are so inclined, here is how you can visit Hyperion!

FREE ONSITE WALKING TOURS
Public tours are available by appointment only, Monday - Thursday, 8:00 a.m. - 4: 00 p.m. To request a plant tour, please call (310) 648-5363 or e-mail
san.elc@lacity.org.