Souped-Up Sewage Plant Will Go Down in History in Laguna Beach : Preservation: The city’s old waste treatment facility with ‘Mediterranean influence’ has won a spot in its new Historic Register.

An old silo-shaped building, wrapped by a winding staircase, nestles against a hillside on Laguna Canyon Road, its former purpose nowhere in evidence.

But the old cylinder at Forest Avenue in Laguna Beach once had a most definite purpose, which its design was meant to hide. The 54-year-old building was the city’s sewage treatment plant.

“It was built to look like anything but what it is,” said Jack Cressman, an architect in Laguna Beach. “They tried to make it look like a little Normandy castle with a Mediterranean influence. There was a lot of revivalism going on at that time.”

Because of its design and architecture, the plant recently was listed on the city’s new Historic Register, perhaps the only sewage treatment facility to have that honor, city officials say.

SH Part to Be Demolished for Parking

The listing means that the cylinder and adjacent office will be preserved. The rest of the plant, however, will be demolished to create more parking for city employees and tourists.

In 1932, the council hired Frank Currie of Currie Engineering Co. to design the plant. According to a 1935 article written by Currie, the city applied for Works Progress Administration money after an attempt to sell bonds for the new plant failed.

Funds received totaled $161,500--about the same as the cost today of demolishing part of it.

The Laguna Canyon site was chosen because it was zoned non-residential. It was, however, within a block of the Woman’s Club and two blocks from City Hall and the fire station. Therefore, the council wanted to use every known method of odor control and state-of-the-art sewage treatment, the article said.

As a result, technology at the old plant is not much different from that used in modern facilities.

After several treatments, effluent was discharged through a cast iron pipe to a point 300 feet offshore. Sludge was dumped into the ocean every six months via that same pipe but “out of bathing season” and while the tide was going out.

For odor control, sewage was prechlorinated at a manhole about 50 feet from the plant. A ventilation system changed the air in the plant every 10 minutes, and exhaust air passed into a flue which extended up the hill into a lighthouse-shaped chimney 200 feet above the plant.

The plant served the city until 1983, when a new one was built in Aliso Canyon.

“Now, 2.1 million gallons are processed each day,” said Terry Brandt, director of Laguna Beach municipal services. “The treatment plant itself is not overburdened, but the city is budgeting funds for repairs on certain problem areas. . . .”

The City Council this month gave final approval to a $700,000 upgrade of the city’s sewer system, a response to a rash of raw sewage spills. Since July, 1987, more than a dozen spills have contaminated beaches.

Incentives Offered for Preservation

The old cylindrical sewage plant joins 771 other structures on the city’s list of historic places, a compilation begun in 1980. The Historic Preservation Ordinance, enacted this month, gives owners of those historic buildings incentives for preserving their places. For example, it gives latitude in zoning for additions to those properties to discourage owners from demolishing the old structures.

“Part of the charm of Laguna Beach is our older cottages,” said associate planner Tamara Campbell. “Land prices are astronomical and people were buying the cottages and tearing them down. We had to find a way to help people keep them by adding on and increasing living area to accommodate modern needs. Now, if the old places are torn down, buildings are limited to new, strict building code requirements.”