THE MUNICIPAL MARVEL YOU USE DAILY, BUT DON’T SEE
There is a reason we don’t talk much about sewer systems. They work. We use them and don’t think about it.
Every flush, every drain, every connection between house and treatment plant functions so reliably, so silently, that we have essentially forgotten the system exists. Invisibility is a hallmark of the success of a public good like a sewer system. That’s true of most all public goods: we only notice them when they break down or miss them when they’re gone.
We didn’t always have this convenient, invisible way of getting rid of our waste. The story of how Encinitas built its modern sanitation infrastructure is a story of community choice and long-term civic investment.
LIFE BEFORE MUNICIPAL SEWERS
Before the mid-20th century, wastewater in the Encinitas area was an individual problem. Each landowner was responsible for their own waste disposal — typically a septic system if you were fortunate, and something considerably less if you were not. The 1887 photograph of Encinitas, above, shows the schoolhouse on the hill, its outhouse a distance off. This wasn’t a system.
The absence of a sewage system was not merely inconvenient. Untreated wastewater contaminated groundwater, fouled lagoons and created conditions for the spread of disease. A growing population would demand something better — and the community would have to choose, together, to create it and pay for it.
FROM DIRTY LAGOON DISCHARGE TO CLEAN OCEAN OUTFALL
The San Elijo wastewater outfall takes treated effluent 8,000 feet offshore
As the population of Cardiff and nearby Solana Beach grew through the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the original wastewater treatment plant — discharging into San Elijo Lagoon — became inadequate. Separate treatment facilities were consolidated around 1965, and a new ocean outfall, 4,000 feet long, was built to carry treated effluent safely offshore. The water quality in the Lagoon improved immediately. The outfall pipe is now 8,000 feet long.
When the City of Encinitas incorporated in 1986, it inherited — and joined — a regional sanitation infrastructure that had been built piece by piece over four decades of collective decision-making.
EPOCHAL TRANSFORMATION
From individual septic tanks and outhouses in the 1880s to a billion-gallon-per-year treatment and recycling campus today: the arc of sewer history in Encinitas spans decades of sustained collective investment. It required dozens of elections, bond measures, interagency agreements, and legislative acts and funding from the local, state, and federal levels. It required civil engineers and public workers and elected officials and, most fundamentally, communities of residents willing to pay together for something they could not provide separately.
It’s a public good that works so well that we never have to think about it.
Presented at the EHS Annual Members Meeting, October 4, 2025.
Video is available on the EHS YouTube channel here
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
June Sekera is a public policy practitioner and scholar whose work focuses on the public economy and public goods production. She is a Senior Research Fellow at Boston University, where she works with the Economics in Context Initiative and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London, where she lectures on public goods and public value production. She is also a Fellow at The New School for Social Research, where she directed the Heilbroner Center’s Public Economy Project, and is the founder and Executive Director of the Public Goods Institute. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School and is the author of The Public Economy in Crisis (2016).
Susan Sage is the Archive Project Manager at the Encinitas Historical Society, and Manager of the Public Goods Initiative. She develops and delivers educational presentations to the local community and works alongside the archivist to digitize, inventory, and catalog the Society’s historical archives. With over 30 years of experience in the technology sector — specializing in client engagement, project management, and education for global eCommerce companies — Susan has presented to Fortune 1000 companies across North America, Europe, and Asia. She now channels that expertise in training and presentation into making local history relevant and accessible to the next generation.
Michael T. Thornton, PE is the General Manager of the San Elijo Joint Powers Authority, the regional wastewater agency serving Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Olivenhain, Solana Beach, Rancho Santa Fe, Del Mar, and the City of Encinitas. A licensed Professional Engineer, Mike brought to the October 2025 presentation a detailed history of wastewater treatment in Encinitas — from the earliest septic systems and the formation of the Cardiff Sanitation District in 1953, through the construction of the San Elijo Water Campus and its ongoing expansion into water recycling and advanced treatment.
Encinitas Historical Society & 1883 Schoolhouse 