water system here in san francisco, we do about 80 million gallons of waste water here in san francisco, which means we basically fill up 120 olympic sized swimming pools each and every day here in the city. we protect public health and safety and environment because we are discharging into the bay and into the ocean. this is essentially the first treatment here at our waste water treatment facility. what we do is slow down the water so that things either settle to the bottom or float to the top. you see we have a nice selection of things floating around there, things from bubble gum wrappers, toilet paper, whatever you dump down the toilet, whatever gets into our storm drains, that's what gets into our waste water treatment and we have to clean. >> see these chains here, this keeps scum from building up. >> on this end in the liquid

end basically we're just trying to produce a good water product that doesn't negatively impact the receiving water so that we have recreation and no bad impact on fish and aquatic life. solids is what's happening. . >> by sludge, what exactly do you mean? is that the actual technical term? . >> it's a technical term and it's used in a lot of different ways, but this is organic sewage sludge. basically what it is is, oh, maybe things that come out of your garbage disposal, things that are fecal in nature. it's sludge left in the water after the primary treatment, then we blend those two over and send them over to digestion. this building is built to

replace tanks here that were so odoriferous they would curl your hair. we built this as an interim process. >> is there a coagulant introduced somewhere in the middle of this? . >> this coagulant brings solids together and lets the water run through. that gives us more time in the digestion process, more time to reduce the amount of solids. these are the biggest ones in the world, like we always like to do in san francisco. they are 4 meter, there's none like it in the world. >> really? wow. >> three meters, usually. we got the biggest, if not the best. so here we are. look at that baby hum. river of sludge. >> one of the things is we use bacteria that's common in our own guts to create this

reduction. it's like an extra digestion. one of the things we have to do to facilitate that is heat that sludge up and keep it at the temperature our body likes, 98.6 degrees. >> so what we have here is the heat exchanger for digester no. 6. these clog up with debris and we're coming in to -- next wet weather season so we always come through here, clean them out, make sure that we get maximum heat exchange during the colder wet weather. sludge season. >> rubber glove. >> right here. >> rubber glove, excellent. all right, guys. >> thank you. >> good luck. >> this is the full on hazmat.

. >> residual liquid. we're taking it time to let it drain. we don't want to get sludge on it necessarily. take your time. stand on the side of it. . >> should we let it release for a while? . >> let it release. >> is that the technical term? . >> this is the most important bolt on the whole thing. this is the locking bolt. it locks this thing right in place. so now. >> take your hammer and what we want to do, we get rag build up right in here. the hot water recirculates right in here, the sludge recirculates in here. the sludge sometimes has rags in it. all we want to do is go around the clean the rags. let me show you how. take the slide hammer, go all

the way through the back, go around. >> got you. >> during the real rainy season, how does that change the way dealing with this job? is it a lot more stuff in there? . >> what we do, charles, we do this quarterly. every four months we go around and clean all the heat exchangers so we don't have a large build up. . >> go around? . >> yeah. (sound of hammering). >> what i'm trying to do, charles, is always pull it out on the low stroke. >> right. so you are not, like, flying

out. now talk about clean up. . >> then where does this stuff get deposited? . >> we're going to dump it in a debris box and it will go back to the plant. >> if you think back, the romans came up with a system of plumbing that allowed us it use water to transport waste away from the hub of civilization, which enabled cities to grow. . >> you have a large bowl, a drive motor and another motor with a planetary gearbox with differential pressure inside there. the large mass up there spinning separating the solids from the liquid. we have to prevent about once a month, we go in there grease

those, change the oil, check the vibration levels. the operators can tell just by the hum of that machine that it's a harmonic noise emitted that it's out of balance and the machine needs to be cleaned. it will start vibrating and we have vibration analysis machines that will come over here and check the levels. so it's kind of an on-going thing that you have to stay on top of on a daily basis. >> handled properly, you take organic residuals, as we call them, that are leftovers of our society and turn them back into some energy. and we have another ability to take that sludge and get a nutrient value for crops there. we actually are running a kind

of composting energy recovery system. >> well, this is a dirty job. we try to do it safely and we try to do it without imposing too much on the public. people want to flush their toilets and have things go away and not be bothersome again. we do a lot to try to accomplish that. i'd like to invite you to come back any time you want. once you got this in your blood, you are not going to be able to stay away. the raging waters are fun and when we do digester cleaning i really hope you can come back. that's quite a sight. >> yeah, that sounds interesting. >> i really appreciate you coming by and it was a

welcome, shall, to the uss macon islands. my name is lewis loeven and i'm the executive director of the san francisco fleet week association and what a great fleet week we're going to have for 2012. thank you. this is the second time we've had the uss macon islands and i want to thank captain pringle and his entire crew. what a great ship and what a great crew. they turned this swear hanger deck around all right night and turned it into a conference room and it looks

absolutely beautiful. thank you, captain, and your entire crew. i'm going to make this short because we're already running a little bit behind schedule, but san francisco fleet week for the third year is organized with i object credible participation from city, civilian agencies from all around the region and all of us our fabulous united states military, the coast guard has been fabulous in providing assets to protect everybody out on the bay. it is one heck of a logistics program to get this whole program started and here we are the culmination of nearly a year of planning. we've had exercises, we've had lots of meetings down in san francisco up at the marines memorial, this is a fabulous program, we had a great medical exchange yesterday. senior leaders seminar third year in a row has gotten a lot of attention. we have a lot of new people who haven't been

here for the past couple years, we have a lot of people who have been here for the last 3 years, and one of the major consistent people who has been behind this whole program is the chairman of the san francisco fleet week association, general -- major general mike myers who i'm going to ask to come up and make is remarks. >> thank you, lewis. when i accepted the responsibilities for organizing san francisco's fleet week, the guidance given to me by our honorary co-chair was bring the fleet back to fleet week and make it productive with a mission. lewis has played a big part. i would like to introduce the third fleet commander, this is his ship, we're grateful to be on the ship and had the third

fleet with us, please help me welcome vice admiral gerald beeman. >> good morning, everybody, thank you so very much for joining us. i know some of you thought i was the warm up band for the rock stars that are going to be here lately. but honestly it's a great honor to be able to host the third seminar. i would like to thank the san francisco fleet week association for helping put this together and grow this into the nation's largest emergency planning event. i don't know how many of you know it, but as a result of the success that we have had here developing partnerships, folks from this association and the conglomeration of people that take part have been called upon not only other places in the united states, but in fact we have at least one example where around the world they called

upon a person from here to help share what we've learned as a group. this next two days, it's not just about the panels. the most important part i think for all of us that we've discovered is the personal relationships, looking each other in the eye, the ability to shake a hand and look each other in the eye and say we are in this together. it's a wonderful opportunity for each and every one of us to understand the capabilities and limitations that we each bring but i think most importantly for us in the military, it's for you on the civilian side to know it is not uncle sam showing up large and in charge, but rather uncle sam showing up with a multitude of capabilities in a supporting role in hopes that we never have to ememploy it, but better to be prepared like we are than

not to be. it's a wonderful opportunity. i encourage each and every one of you to ask questions, take advantage of the opportunity that is so important so if the bell does sound we know who we'll call and who we're going to be working with. thank you so much. >> folks, i have two more speakers to welcome you all and the last one will be the mayor of our great city, but before i bring him up, i wanted our senior military in the bay area to say a few remarks because the us coast guard provides and enables the safety conditions for us to be able to have fleet week. it's such an important part of fleet week, what the coast guard provides, so i'd like to bring up to the lecturn

here vice admiral -- we call him admiral z because i have a hard time pronouncing his name, but he is now the commander of all the coast guard in the pacific, so admiral z >> mike, thank you very much and good morning, everybody. just to follow on admiral beeman's remarks, this is really all about building partnerships. and i'll go back to when i was the federal on scene coordinator for the deep water horizon oil spill with 50,000 responders, many of them military, but also faith-based. we had 35 federally recognized tribes, we had perish presidents that all have an equal voice and when you have any response this is also reality tv reality tv will try to triangulate against the first responders so it's critical you have that partnership built up front and

going forward, recognizing any plan we come up with probably will not survive the first shot in any campaign. but the partnerships must endure because unity of effort and unity of command are critical in anything that we do. what better way to showcase what our united states navy and our marine corps, our sea-going services, bring to the table in an emergency response, but recognize that they also have another mission to do, macon island just came off a 7-month deployment, this is an era when we're pivoting to the pacific. the ring of fire is also in the pacific. over 35,000 on average fatalities a year over 35 billion dollars worth of damage and we see that year in and year out with tsunamis of catastrophic proportions. today the coast guard is dealing with the debris from that tsunami as it comes ashore here in the state waters as

well. just it close on admire beeman's remarks, i think it's critical not just the work here at seminar but over a cup of coffee exchanging business cards because at the end of the day it's the partnerships that mufrt endure at time of crisis. thank you to the macon island for this show of force during this third fleet week. >> i'd like to bring up the mayor of the great city and county of san francisco. what a difference he's made as the mayor of san francisco. he certainly has welcomed fleet week, he's welcomed the fleet and marines and mayor lee, we can't thank you enough for your support for everything we're trying to do. please help me welcome mayor ed lee. >> thank you, general myat.

good morning, everybody, welcome to the uss macon island. it's my pleasure to be here with you this morning on the green ship of our u.s. navy. it's very appropriate that it be here heading the fleet in san francisco. admiral beeman, thank you very much for your leadership. it is impressive what we are accomplishing. just two years ago, we started with an understanding that our military, the coast guard, the u.s. navy, the marine corps, had something that we really needed. it's called logistics expertise. and we recognized that and with the help of our fleet week association, with the help of our honorary chair, former secretary of state george scholtz, along with senator

feinstein who started fleet week, we began to appreciate in addition to appreciating the men and women in uniform and the wonderful attributes of having fleet week and the blue angels and the parade of ships, we could also be working on something very important to this city. all across the world there are examples after example and i know the men and women and leadership of the uss macon know this after their tour of duty these past months, all over the world there are disasters and emergencies that we are responding to and that you have become the humanitarian assistance and the disaster relief that is absolutely needed. why not practice that here? and so two years ago we gathered with our own departments from the port of san francisco to our sheriff to our police and fire, led by our emergency management division, getting all of our departments from public works to our mta

and others together to understand what our roles were and to begin something that i think other cities are beginning to understand are invaluable, creating the relationships, doing the table top exercises and then taking that further step of progress that we've done that i saw personally yesterday is going from table top exercises, going from green our counterparts and all the different ranks and understanding their roles to actually practicing what we do. and i can't think of a department more than our public health department who has the best trauma center in the bay area in san francisco through our general hospital to then be with me yesterday and understand how an emergency surgical pop-up tent can be created in less than one hour on the beach of san francisco.

and to know and to look these people in the eye, the people from the u.s. navy that put up these tents and set up the gurnies and understand they can treat 50 people at a time, 20 percent in absolutely critical condition, and have a 99 percent recovery rate for everyone who goes through that, no matter what their wounds might be. this is what we practice, this is what i gained from the exercise yesterday and of course i join the core russ of people who saw the amphibious hover deliver its ability on the beach to look at the clock and see how fast it did, to see the unveiling of those logistics on hand with the people involved. these are the practices now as our public wants it know more and more what are we doing to prepare beyond the table top exercises? we are practicing these very vital practices,

these things that will really help save lives, creating more relationships, bringing in more partners. we have all the city agencies that are here today. we're also bringing in other agencies whether it's caltrans or national park service, that would be part of this. whether it's other federal government entities that we work with, of course our local coast guard, people who are here every day that need to build these relationships because we are not going to fail our public. too many examples across the world where they known disasters were in front of them and they did not prepare. and this is our opportunity and i am very thankful to our fleet week association for bringing this forward to the u.s. navy for being here to our marine corps and our coast guard, they are all working together to make sure that we can practice what we preach. the most, i think, beautiful

thing of fleet week now is not only the appreciation but right down to the neighborhood leaders in our neighborhoods in san francisco, they can have a feeling of confidence that the city is ready. so i want to again thank general myett, thank lewis loeven, thank all the partners. not only are we doing it here and not only are we receiving this, but we're also sending our teams to places like camp pepblgds done and changing information with top brass so they can get information as well. it's a two-way street, it's always been so. i know we have a lot of events this week where i'm going to ask the public to take public transit to honor our commitment to the city just as we are doing here on the uss macon. the fleet week celebration of our city of course will celebrate the blue

angels and the parade of ships but i think the public will appreciate even more how ready we are and the practice we are doing. thank you very much. again, i salute the men and women in uniform that are here to help us, that are here to practice what we preach and again also to all the different agencies that are working together with us. thank you very much for being here, happy fleet week. . >> when people ask me about our mayor, i tell them, he gets it. you can see that from his remarks just now. he knows what this is about. and a lot of other people get it, too, and i want to tell you after fleet week the senior leaders seminar last year, the word got around. and in november there was a massive earthquake in have an, turkey, and the city of san

francisco and the san francisco fleet week association were asked to send a team to do an assessment of their earthquake and their preparations or lack of preparation. so the word is getting out. seattle invited us to come up and talk to them about incorporating that, this program, into their fleet week. so the word is getting out. i'd like to tell you just a story that i've told before to some of you but it relates very much to the next panel that we have here. back in april of 1992, i was commanding the first marine division and we had been to the gulf war and we had a lot of parades and we were feeling pretty good about things and on 30 april, 1992, the results of the rodney king trial were announced. two days

later, we found the first marine division deployed to compton and watts and one of the most horrific sights i'd ever seen. it was the largest riot in u.s. history. 3,000 people were injured, 60 people were killed, and we actually ended up at one point in time having to use live ammunition. but once we did, the bloods and the krips and the gangs there realized we were serious. the reason we got involved is because they learned none of the police departments within los angeles could talk to each other on their communications gear. they had a different piece of equipment in the los angeles county sheriff's department than the police department or the compton police or the watts police or

whoever. we ended up, we were providing radios so they could talk to each other. and i said that that should never happen again. we should have interoperatable communications. there's some that say we aren't any better off today than we were in 1992. we don't know, but we had an exercise, part of this fleet week preparation exercise, put on by the department of emergency management and it involved a lot of various agencies and we looked at the command of control situation and the command of control situation was an important one because you realized in 1992 the situation got so grim that the governor of the state then asked dod to take it over. so our chain of command went from my headquarters at the 7th

infrapb tridivision headquarters right back to the pentagon. we said that should never happen again. so we looked at command of control relationships in this exercise. so we're going to bring up the next panel and this exercise was conducted in august and we're going to take a few minutes to get the panel up here and we'll have the panel moderator introduce us, john vaughan from harris, but if any of you need to make a head call, behind these screens we have men and women's heads, restrooms for those of you who don't know the term. behind those screens. rich is telling me i'm going back wrong end of the ship, back that way behind the screens, so feel free to go

back there. so let's take a few minutes now and bring the panel up and the panel moderator, john vaughan thank my name is john vaughan, i'm from harris corporation. we're delighted a sponsor again this year of san francisco fleet week. our focus, if you had an opportunity to see on the way in the demonstration, is on interoperatability. this has been a challenge as lts general just mentioned. in the past we have been blocked in interoperatability by the use of different frequencies, by the use of different digital formats and been challenged in a number of different ways. i guess since those days there has been one important improvement,