In the 1940s, central Contra Costa County was a rural area of farms, orchards and a few small towns. With the end of World War II, a building boom began and so did the population of Contra Costa County.

This ultimately resulted in a sanitation crisis with most of the county depending on septic systems, often inefficient due to the area’s heavy adobe clay soil. At the time, State health authorities considered the polluted conditions arising from those septic tanks to be among the worst in California.

With septic tanks overflowing and waterborne diseases such as typhoid becoming a potential threat, civic leaders rallied public support for a solution. In an election held on June 24, 1946, a proposal to form a sanitary district for areas of central Contra Costa County was approved. On July 15, 1946, the County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution officially creating the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (CCCSD).

Within 26 months, CCCSD’s newly constructed main sewer trunk line and treatment plant were operational. At that time, CCCSD’s service area population was 15,000; the treatment plant’s capacity was 4.5 million gallons per day; and the CCCSD’s collection system consisted of 50 miles of sewer pipe.

Enormous changes have occurred since the District’s beginnings in 1946 as a small agency serving a rural area……

Website:

http://www.centralsan.org/