'Hood #23: After Touring the "Disneyland of Poop," I Go for Lunch in Playa Vista

Today, my friend Sandra and I went on a tour of the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant—or as the tour organizers called it, "The Disneyland of Poop"—in Playa del Rey.  Truth be told, I've already checked Playa del Rey off my 'Hood Challenge list, so to make this count, we tacked on lunch in nearby Playa Vista.

An "air scrubber" pipe

But let's face it: what's really exciting is finding out about how LA handles its sewage.  Seriously, I've wanted to see this place for years, prominent as it is right there off the ocean.  The tour guides warned us the facility would be smelly—and parts of it were.  What keeps it from being unbearable—and also from stinking up the surrounding areas?  They use air scrubbers (??!) that remove odors.

Rather than give you a blow-by-blow of the tour (which was really interesting!) I'll share a few fun facts I learned:

• This is the largest of four LA wastewater treatment plants and it treats, as our docent dubbed it, "sewage of the stars" that's piped in from upscale areas like the westside, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Sherman Oaks, etc.

Our lovely volunteer models the poop sorting machine

•  Incoming sewage gets the big stuff pulled out (condoms, cardboard, etc.) and then is treated twice through a settling process in which water is separated from remaining solids.

•  There are pipes that take the treated water five miles out to sea so we're not swimming in it —it's not clean enough to drink.

•  The solids ("the poop stuff") get ground down and put on trucks to be used as fertilizer.  (We got to see it being loaded up into the trucks—good times!...and I'll be washing my veggies a whole lot more thoroughly from now on.)

•  Only stuff that goes down drains/toilets gets treated—anything that goes into storm drains (motor oil, plastic trash bags, doggie poo, etc.), goes directly into the ocean.


• Weirdest things that've come in through sewage lines:  a bowling ball, a motorcycle without its wheels and, yes, body parts.

The tour lasted three hours, after which Sandra and I went to Piknic restaurant in Playa Vista.  We'd considered lunch only a "maybe" based on whether we were too grossed out by the tour to eat.  Ha, I should know myself better than that.  Nothing stands between me and food.

There's really not much to report on Playa Vista.  It's a new, clean community of condos, offices and shops next to a restored wetlands.  My salad was delicious.  Yep, that's about it on Playa Vista.