Cistern Circles of San Francisco
September 19th, 02007 by Alexander Rose
I have often wondered what the brick circles along many of the streets in San Francisco are. I had always thought they were some kind of historical marker. It turns out they represent a nice piece of long term civic planning and disaster preparedness. Each one marks a 75,000 gallon cistern that is an emergency water supply for earthquakes and fires. These were installed during the rebuilding effort after the 01906 earthquake. I have not found too much documentation on it except for this little snippet from Channel 5 news.
It is a reminder that many civic water projects represent some of the most forward thinking in western society… at least from an engineering point of view. From a societal point of view however, some of this long term planning to feed cities with water, has had disastrous effects on the upstream and downstream users of the water. Owens Valley to LA, The Colorado River to the south west, and now the Great Basin to Las Vegas are all incredibly forward looking in their engineering, but terribly short sighted in the long arc of societal resource allocation.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 11:35 am and is filed under Long Term Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on September 19th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
This is San Francisco’s “Auxiliary Water Supply System” (AWSS), which resulted from a 1908 study about how to avoid the fires after the earthquake. Here’s a history, and here’s a study. You can find lots more by googling for its name.
Posted on November 26th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Oh my gosh! I’ve seen these brick circles all over SF. I ride a scooter and see them in the oddest areas, in high concentration around Division Street and then sprinkled throughout the neighborhoods including at 14th and Castro. I always thought they had something to do with old cable car lines or perhaps old “rond-points” that became 4-way intersections or lost to causeways at a later date. I’m so glad you posted this. I have been looking all over to figure out what they were!!! I’d love to know if the water from the cisterns has been refreshed or if it is 100 year old dirty-*ss water… or even dried up? Who maintains them… interesting :) :) Thank you so much! Isn’t San Francisco awesome!!! I love this city :)
Posted on February 10th, 2010 at 12:58 am
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