played. it was supposed to be a private event. at 1000 showed up and it was a disaster. i don't know what is going to happen here. i don't really want to be held as possible for something really bad happening. with respect to the number of security, how many? >> i was going to ask for 18. >> he said 15. i was going ask for 18. >> paint me a picture here. how many of those would be available to help disperse the crowd if a crowd showed up in excess of 1000 people? >> i am not the security

company, but i can say that securing the interior would be securing all the doors or the exit in case of fire, earthquake, or whatever. i think a majority of those g aurds -- guards would be there. he does very large events including most of the events in the civic center. they are one of the companies, one of the several companies we are lucky enough to have in the city that know how to do large events. what i was going to ask for is 18, and i was going to specifically ask them to ask him to make it 18 experienced

guards. sometimes, they hire off of the streets. 18 experienced guards. that is what my thing was going to be. >> if you think 18 is the right number -- >> if they disperse them down the hill, commissioner roja, where would they go? columbus? it would be busy, and there are restaurants and businesses that might be able to benefit from that. having said that, does somebody have a motion? >> i would like to make a motion to approve with the times stated and the language with regard to security personnel as

commissioner joseph has stated on the record, when the language on the record that includes distributing a letter to all members within a 500 foot radius. one more chance. any other specific conditions? that is my motion. >> there is a second. >> commissioner benetti has seconded. any further discussions? commissioner benetti: aye. commissioner meko: aye. commissioner perez: aye. commissioner roja: aye. commissioner joseph: aye. president newlin: have a good time. did somebody really applaud? how cool is that? commissioners questions and comments.

commissioner roja: i would just like to applaud your efforts, using your expertise for all of the different sound equipment. you are speaking latin. you lost me for about 10 minutes. with your expertise, it was incredible for this type of event. it is a very sensitive area, to be able to have that kind of expertise and ask the right question, and it is great. i hope you pull this off. president newlin: commissioner meko? commissioner meko: no more comment. president newlin: the only thing i want to say with regard to this really quickly, we have come out of a recession.

the city wide events that engaged people and businesses that put our city in front of the news has got to be good for everyone. small businesses, jobs, it has to be good for income. i encourage these events. it is daytime. i really encourage more city- wide events for the vibrancy of this city. the city has been hurt so badly. that is my comment. her new business? anybody? without objection, we are

>> welcome to coulterwire. the san francisco arts commission and department of public works has joined forces

by battling graffiti by launching a new program called street smarts. the program connects established artist with private property owners to create a vibrant murals which is a proven an effective strategy for combating graffiti on private property. artists, along with his crew, recently transformed a building turn to vandalism into a masterpiece. let us take a look. >> part of me has so much compassion for other graffiti artists. i understand why they are doing what they do. for me, it was something that was so hard to get out of. the lifestyle in general. j and tagging is addicting.

i used to be on these routes. i have compassion for these guys. a lot of these guys are super talented. i am just trying to find the median to still be involved but still do my thing as an artist and work with the city, like we are doing. we are doing this wall in a collaboration with the san francisco arts commission. basically what they are doing is trying to get rid of some of the tags and by putting up murals. they are cooking up graffiti artists with business owners. today, we are trying to get a lot of this wall buffed out and covered it. then we will spray on some sketches of what we are going to do. the rain is coming tomorrow.

it should be here for a few days. we want others to know that there are artists working on this wall. the owner of this building, she has had to pay a lot of money to keep on paying over these attacks. >> we have paid as much as $400. the fed typically have been talk about four times a year. typically, it happened right after we have been notified that we need to remove it. the painter will go up there and paid over the graffiti and make a perfect canvas for the tigers to come back. this program appeals to me because we were looking for a way to stop the taggers and the ugly graffiti. this program has beautiful work done by great artists that we thought would look great on our building. cameron talked about a few

difficulties that he thought would be great. he called me and we talked about a theme of what he could do to the side of the building. he took some pictures and e-mail them to me. >> we are going to do all kinds of animals and plants. also, we are all to doing graffiti letters. if you one other taggers to respect our, you have to respect graffiti art. >> if you had a lot of characters in it, you will get more respect from business owners and stuff like that, but letters will give you the respect of the graffiti artists.

i have actually had in my name in this patch of seaweed. >> what if we did it a giant blue whale? >> i was going to do a puffer fish. >> the program for the children is just so important. this is important, too, but you have to get at the kids to find out why they are doing it and direct them in more positive ways. i think what you are doing is great. >> have a good day. see you later. >> dana has been great, she has been a sport about the project. it was cool for her to see it and actually like it.

as an artist, it means a lot to us. we are going to make it look really clean today. then it should be done. we have had this mural of for about six years and it has not been tagged. it really works as a deterrent. a lot of us graffiti artists have been waiting for an opportunity like this, to express ourselves on walls. and there are so many walls around the city that could be beautified. i am so thankful that this opportunity has come about. >> my word encourage anyone who is thinking about it to really jump on the bandwagon. it is looking beautiful. when i came here this morning, i was notified that taggers were there last night, but fortunately, they did not touch our building.

>> to check out the mural in person, stop by 65 polk road. in addition to being a street smarts artist, he has been teaching students about the value for public space and creating public art for the communities through a program called where art lives. for a full list of other in your locations and to learn more about the efforts to combat vandalism, visit

because we have a great waste 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