another technique, the cured-in-place lining. it's equivalent to putting a large sock through the existing sewer. we form a new pipe inside the old pipe, and therefore we seal up all of the defects that allow rainwater to come in. hunter: we repair about 730 leaks a month in our system. griffin: the improvements that we've made will make the environment better. we had approximately 1,000 overflows occur in 1999. today, we've reduced overflows by 45% to 50%. and it's going to continue to improve as we go forward with the rehabilitation program that's required under the consent decree. narrator: an important piece of the program is the construction of an 8-mile-long storage tank that will significantly decrease combined sewer overflows.

man: right now, we're at the bottom of the rockdale construction shaft. we're 310 feet below grade, deep under atlanta in hard rock. in the downtown area of atlanta, the sewer system and the stormwater system are combined and there are overflows during storm events, and so the purpose of this system is to relieve that flow, take it into the tunnel, transport it to a brand-new treatment plant, clean up the chattahoochee river. narrator: instead of the combined sewage overflowing into the river, it will flow into this tunnel that acts as a storage tank. the water will then slowly empty into the new plant for treatment before it's released back into the river. man: the system in total is about 8 1/2 miles, 27 feet in diameter. most of the time it will be dry. the only time it will fill is when the sewer system is overwhelmed by the storm. it is a massive project. our budget was $210 million.

we've worked about a million and a half man-hours. hunter: it is an incredible amount of work. our capital program right now is $3.9 billion. over a period of less than 10 years. franklin: so it's very expensive. the bottom line is, we, as atlantans, as georgians, don't have a choice to protect the river. we need to leave it better than we found it, and it's really been a political advantage for me, not a disadvantage. people laugh about me being the sewer mayor, but they remember what i'm doing. griffin: we want people to understand, when they see one of our work crews out working on the mains, that that work is necessary in order for them to have good clean drinking water or to have a good, functioning wastewater system. franklin: you don't put a roof on the house one time.

you don't fix the plumbing one time, any more than i get my hair done one time. if we don't continue to invest for the next 20 years, we'll find ourselves back at the same point that we were in the late '90s. if we don't protect water, we will be without water. we will be without industry, we will be without jobs, we will be without a healthy economy, and our people will be sick. so we don't really have a choice. we're going to find out why that's important. it's a question of, who's going to pay, how much you're going to be willing to pay in order to ensure that your children live the kind of life that we as americans have promised them. woman: and what we're going to do is get a marble to travel through your pipe. child: keep still! keep still! woman: aw, there's a clog in the drain. oh, there it is. [ laughing ]

narrator: in the 19th century, foresighted leadership and innovative engineering established drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure that supported the growth of the nation. through much of the 20th century, we continued to invest, to ensure our public health, safety, and economy. but now, in the 21st century, we face the need to revisit our commitment to the buried assets and infrastructure that for so long have provided for our way of life. johnson: infrastructure across this country needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed now. hunter: what we need is responsible stewardship. we just can't turn a blind eye and say that they're going to continue to work for another 50 or 100 years. franklin: we can't be embarrassed to tell our congresspeople that we want something different. kelly: it's going to take state officials, it's going to take federal assistance, it's going to take all of us to get this united states

back where it belongs. we're not there yet, but we can be there. grumbles: water is america's greatest liquid asset. and citizens and governments all need to be reminded of that from time to time. woman: what can individuals do to make a difference? allbee: we need to accept the responsibility that future generations need to be able to rely on those assets to have the same quality of life that we have. oberstar: all the water there ever was or ever will be is here on earth today and it's our responsibility now, at this time, in this generation, to protect it. that must be our legacy to the future.

i'm the president of friends of mclaren park. it is one of the oldest neighborhood community park groups in san francisco. i give a lot of tours through the park.

during those tours, a lot of the folks in the group will think of the park as very scary. it has a lot of hills, there's a lot of dense groves. once you get towards the center of the park you really lose your orientation. you are very much in a remote area. there are a lot of trees that shield your view from the urban setting. you would simply see different groves that gives you a sense of freedom, of being outdoors, not being burdened by the worries of city life. john mclaren had said that golden gate park was too far away. he proposed that we have a park in the south end of the city. the campaign slogan was, people need this open space. one of the things that had to open is there were a lot of people who did a homestead here, about 25 different families. their property had to be bought up. so it took from 1928 to 1957 to

buy up all the parcels of land that ended up in this 317 acres. the park, as a general rule, is heavily used in the mornings and the evenings. one of the favorite places is up by the upper reservoir because dogs get to go swim. it's extremely popular. many fights in the city, as you know, about dogs in parks. we have 317 acres and god knows there's plenty of room for both of us. man and his best friend. early in the morning people before they go to work will walk their dogs or go on a jog themselves with their dogs. joggers love the park, there's 7 miles of hiking trails and there's off trail paths that hikers can take. all the recreational areas are heavily used on weekends. we have the group picnic area which should accommodate 200

people, tennis courts are full. it also has 3 playground areas. the ampitheater was built in 1972. it was the home of the first blues festival. given the fact that jerry garcia used to play in this park, he was from this neighborhood, everybody knows his reputation. we thought what a great thing it would be to have an ampitheater named after jerry garcia. that is a name that has panache. it brings people from all over the bay area to the ampitheater. the calls that come in, we'd like to do a concert at the jerry garcia ampitheater and we do everything we can to accommodate them and help them because it gets people into the park. people like a lot of color and that's what they call a park. other people don't. you have to try to reconcile

all those different points of view. what should a park look like and what should it have? should it be manicured, should it be nice little cobblestones around all of the paths and like that. the biggest objective of course is getting people into the park to appreciate open space. whatever that's going to take to make them happy, to get them there, that's the main goal. if it takes a planter with flowers and stuff like that, fine. you know, so what? people need to get away from that urban rush and noise and this is a perfect place to do it. feedback is always amazement. they don't believe that it's in san francisco. we have visitors who will say, i never knew this was here and i'm a native san franciscoan. they wonder how long it's been here. when i tell them next year we'll get to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the park,k,

>> welcome to the department of building inspection brown bag lunch. today we have an extremely special event. we are here at paige glass on mission street in san francisco with mr. ken paige. ken paige has generously invited us into his glass shop and gallery. and the paige glass goes back a long, long time, right? to preearthquake, whichever earthquake -- >> all of them. they're all good. >> when did paige glass start? >> the big one, 1906. >> this happened afs in your family, was paige glass back then? >> well, the 1906 was a very

important year, of course, for san francisco, needless to say. the bad news was the death and destruction, city in flames. the good news for my grandfather was even though he was living, at that point, in a tent out in golden gate park, you know, one of a whole lot of people. the good news, he was a young glazer, and every window in the city was broken. >> a holy grail of glazing. >> [laughter.] >> so at that point, shortly after the tremors sopped, he said wait a minute, i've got this idea. so paige glass really started in 1906, with that quake. >> wow. >> and he was so busy, he didn't really form an actual company-company, a registered company till 1910. i think that was the first time he had to catch his breath.

so, officially, as a company, we're 1910, even though he started in the big '06 quake. >> and this is a really interesting building, which i hadn't planned to talk much about, but this was an unreenforced macery building, i presume. >> it was. >> and it is heavily reenforced. as you walk around, you will see large steel members and all sorts of other kinds of reenforcement, which are really done as well as i've ever seen this done in san francisco. >> we were also the first building to be seismically r reenforced k bracing after the quake in '89. >> what was the '89 earthquake for you like in the glazing business? >> again, the good news was most of the windows were broken in the city. the bad news was all of our inventory here all fell over. so we had about eight debris boxes of inventory that we

shoveled out. but we have very good relationship with our supplier. so it came in just as fast as it went out. so we were bs busy, busy. working 24 hours a day. >> what were the notable jos, did you do the neiman marcus in. >> no. i-mag is a beautiful building, beautifully designed, except all the windows were in stainless steel frames, and the glass that have installed was glass that wasn't tempered, and they were glazed very, very tightly with a putty that had a hardener in it. so it was like they were encased in concrete, essentially. and so there was no room for these things to go, or to wiggle at all. so they all broke.

well 85% of them broke. >> so the code requires that glazing not take the load of the building, as the building moves. the glazing is not supposed to be the element that resists the force of the building, because that is not going to work. glazing will break. and we can see now, in almost all buildings, that there is some kind of attachment system that allows the building to flex, and it does not harden. and we very carefully inspect and require a careful inspection of that and you have a handout today that has many of the code requirements in it and we can provide that handout if anybody wants to call us or pick one up here. you said eneeled glass. what is that. >> that was it, that was -- well, glass. and it is -- they heat up the glass. they pour it. and they let it cool.

but they put it into a special eneeling oven so that it cools down gradually. it can be broken. >> is this used for window glass? >> window glass is eneeled glass. the eneeling is important because if you just let it cool naturally it sets up strain patterns and will break by itself. it gets very, very fragile. so the eneeling is good. buttarily on, we had this -- but early on we had this interesting product called tempering. it's a crazy thing. you heat the glass up again, and you cool it down really fast, and then all of a sudden it sets up strain patterns within the surface of the glass that makes it impact resistance. and when it breaks, whoa, it makes it into a thousand tiny little crystals. and so it's, at that time, a new

product. unusual. since then, it's common. i mean almost all glass that we sell, other than table tops for windows, is tempered glass. >> do we have some regular glass we can take a look at. >> we do. >> i think we're all familiar with it. >> well, this is just your basic window pane glass. and -- >> and it can be cut to size. >> it can be cut, and quickly. so you're going to use this for, you know, small windows, and picture frames, things like that. >> you would not use that in what are considered hazardous locations in a door, or next to a door, next to a walking surface. >> window glass is really not a mysterious thing. but it's great material. it's quick. it's easy. the problem is you get something that -- it's actually stronger

than you think, huh. oops. ashes to ashes, dust to dust. but you can see, it's really not meant for safety glazing. i remember as a kid, you know, running -- my brother chasing me, running with my hat, putting my hat -- when the door used to be open, and it's now closed. i still have a scar there. but at this point, of course, anything in a door is going to be tempered. >> or some other type of sait glazing. -- safety glazing. it could be laminated. >> or plaque. >> there's an interesting new product, and i don't know if you're been dealing with it, you probably have, which is two layers some kind of glass, with a film of plastic, but it's actually an intoo mess ens material and as it heats up, it foams up and forms a fire protective barrier within the glass.

you can use these glazing units as a wall. they're actually not windows, they're walls. and we've seen this being used around san francisco, so that you have a fully rated, tested wall, that might be a one-hour wall, which is your typical property line wall, which is transparent, until there's a fire, when it changes, foams comes up. >> is that the kind of glass you would use for a balcony if you wanted to see through and have a protective shield? >> no. you don't want to use that product if you don't want to because it's inexpensive. >> i've heard it's $60 a quair foot. is that anywhere near -- >> no. you know, this can be closer to twice that, anyway. >> really. >> and so the -- and it would require a special frame. it requires a steel frame. for a balcony, what you would expect to see is half inch tempered glass.

and that's really not very expensive. and but the thing there is, you're going to have to probably do it in pieces so that, in case one of those pieces broke, you'd still have that handrail that goes across the top of that, keeping you back so that you aren't falling over with the broken glass. >> right. and the code talks about other types of protection. you can't just have a single piece of glass, without some other type of protection, and it's in this handout that you have here. >> that code may change with the advent of special materials. eventually, we will come and say -- and it's been supplied in different cities, where we take a century -- it's called century guard, whereas there is this piece of plastic in between a couple of pieces of one eneeled,

and one heat treated and the other tempered, so that even if it broke it stays together and stays rigid. so there really isn't reason then for that top handrail. >> the building code in san francisco says that we can approve products that are not specifically required or meet the requirements of the building code, if can be shown to us that there's a rational basis for approval, that they're meeting the intent of the code. we can approve an alternate method or material and we do that a lot now, especially with new materials flooding the market. we have to look at things on a case by case, use by use basis, and we would consider this sort of thing. protective glazing, wired glass, we see traditionally all over. >> so we've got wired glass here. you know, it's a product that we used to sell a lot of. but almost a product whose time

has come. i mean this is an obscure wire glass, with -- it's rated 45 minutes for fire. but the problem is there's no impact. so this is not -- at one time, you could put this in a fire door, only in a -- there was a time when they put this in shower doors. and so clearly that's not legal anymore, with good reason, besides the fact that all of the wires rusted. there's some pretty nasty-loo nasty-looking shower doors that we replaced. the other thing is it's not terribly strong, cracks easily, and -- >> if you put your hand through it, or to it, you can get seriously injured. it looks like it's supposed to be safe. it is actuall actually not terre for human impact. >> so at this point, there are some -- because it's got wires in it, you really couldn't

temper it before. now i believe there is somebody that can temper it. how well it's tempered, i couldn't say. but it's legally tempered. sore sometimes you can put like a safety film on the back of it, and that would give you, again, some impact protection. but it's really not a contrary product. it's seldom -- we used to go through cases of this stuff. now we sell practically nothing of this. but it breaks -- i mean we all -- primarily what we're seeing this is in sky lights that are existing around town. it holds together, as we see. you know, so this is the advantage. it's all held together. but, you know, it's not a perfect product. and primarily, what's taken its

place is laminated glass, which you don't have those wires in it. people don't want to see those wires. and so laminated is probably most skylights that we do are laminated. or an insulated glass, where the laminated is on the bottom, and tempered is on the top. >> with an air space -- >> with an air space. the laminated, at one time, they used to sell tempered skylights but they really didn't work terribly well. yes it breaks into little safety cubes but if it's falling from 100 feet above -- >> the code had a provision that you had to have a net underneath to catch the pieces, if it broke. >> which i'm using. so at this point, not going there. it's laminated on the bottom,

tempered on the top, so that a fireman can really walk over this on the rooftop, and whatever. you know, it's good for the top. bottom is protected. so that's primarily where most wire glass has gone. >> just a comment about skylights in the building code. skylights of glass can be located at any distance from that property line protection that i mentioned earlier. typically in san francisco when you're on a property line you have to have a one hour wall. olderbles don't have it but after the 60s they do. this can be right up to the edge of the roof. however, a plastic sky light may not be. a plastic sky light has to be kept back how far from the edge of the roof, one of you building inspectors? three feet from the edge of the roof. i'm not sure why but that's specifically regulated. >> partly because the plastic is

flammable. the plastic heats up -- the bad part about plastic is that it will burn and melt. at one point in time, lexan was the cure-all for everything. you can't do this, you can't do that, it's indestructible. a major jewelry store put it in their windows, and they were home-safe, it's perfect. till a enterprising burglar took a hand torch and did a perfect circle in and reached right on through. it melted the perfect little hole and moved on. so what we do the glazing for tiffany's around the united states, and what we do for them is a piece of leksan in the center, half inch leksan and

water white and extra star fire on -- >> what is that water white or star fire do? >> it's extra -- glass has -- so the street layers cep them protected. they -- kept them protected. they haven't had any major burglaries to point. >> somebody is working on it. >> well the product has become expensive because of the three lawyers so they put an additional layer of mylar graffiti film over the outside so in case it's scratched then we pull off that sacrificial layer and put on a new piece of plastic which is cheaper than replacing that whole window. in terms of clarity, the regular glass is fairly green. and the thicker it is, the emreener it gets. this table here is a slumped piece of glass. and it's about two, two and a

half inches thick. and that is just the natural color of regular glass. and from different minerals that are in glass, there's -- you know, when it's sand and soda, and whatever minerals are in the sand gives it the color of the glass. so that's copper and iron that are giving that green look. there's another product called star fire, and that they're opti white is another name, that is nor clear. this is more clear. you can see on the edge, even though we're picking it up, this glass is a little more clear. there's another product called water white which is as clear as plastic, and just really, really clear. and so that's your next grade up in terms of being truly clorlless coralless