Isn’t Strawberry Creek so horribly polluted that a single drop can render a grown man deathly ill?
Actually, no. There was a time in Campus history when Strawberry Creek was used as an open sewer to transport sanitary wastes away from the University to San Francisco Bay. However, in the 1950’s, East Bay Municipal Utility District built the main sewage treatment plant in West Oakland and helped cities install sewer systems that diverted the wastewater away from creeks and the Bay and to the treatment plant. Since then, the major sources of pollution in Strawberry Creek are contaminated storm runoff from the streets (caused mostly by leaking motor vehicles, homeowner applied fertilizer and pesticides, and construction site sediment), broken water mains that send chloraminated (added to make water safe to drink) water down the storm drains and into the Creek, and, relatively small leaks from cracked sewer pipes and mains. Those sources, plus fecal wastes from pets and wild animals, do have an impact on current water quality but not nearly to the extent of the pollution levels in the ea
