‘It’s been a fight for our homes’: The ongoing saga to fix San Francisco’s sewers
Months before this fall’s rains began, Victoria Sanchez stood out in front of her home on Cayuga Avenue in San Francisco’s Mission Terrace neighborhood. Her block appeared ordinary on that July day: rows of colorful Mediterranean-style homes stretched wall-to-wall as the 44 Muni bus rumbled past the corner. The scene was typical of many neighborhoods across San Francisco with one distinct difference. Along the sidewalks and driveways of Cayuga Avenue lay rows of sandbags, a reminder of the destructive floods of sewage and stormwater that the rainy season can bring — inundations that have ravaged the neighborhood for decades. Sanchez walked her street with an album full of photographs and news clippings as she retold stories of the floods.