What are Shared Services? 

Shared services help us keep costs down and provide better services to our customers by allowing us to collaborate with cities and other districts.  Think, for example, if Sunset Beach Sanitary District needed traffic cones for a one-time project, wouldn’t it be cheaper to borrow unused cones from the City of Huntington Beach than to purchase them outright?  We think so.

Here are some examples of shared services with other agencies:


Broadway Generator
By working closely with the City of Huntington Beach, SBSD was able to build an addition to a bathroom on the greenbelt for the purpose of permanently housing our portable generator.  This means that in the event the power goes out due to an emergency (flood, earthquake, etc.), the generator will automatically start and keep the Broadway Pump Station pumping!  Before we housed the generator, a SBSD employee had to drive to Huntington Beach to retrieve the portable generator, bring it to the pump station, hook it up, and get the electricity started.  All this had to be done in about 45 minutes time…. or else!  Luckily, we have never had a spill, but this will help ensure that we never do.

Main Sewer Replacement in Surfside
The District completed the Surfside Sewer Replacement, correcting a collection problem that included up to 6 homes on a single, lateral, with no maintenance procedures.  The 36 homes affected now have single private laterals that discharge to a public sewer.  As part of that effort, SBSD worked with the Surfside Colony and City of Seal Beach to include repaving of the streets in the project, assist in obtaining permits for the project, and sharing some of the costs of the project.

Warner Avenue Sewer Project
Over the past ten years, SBSD and the City of Huntington Beach have been working on a project to finance and rebuild the Warner Gravity Sewer.  As a result of this project, which was completed in 2015, SBSD was able to completely eliminate one of our pump stations.  This joint effort saved SBSD significant amounts of money by minimizing our costs to complete our portion of the work, and saving more than $80,000 per year in future maintenance, power, and monitoring costs.  In addition, we have reduced the chances of a sewage spill similar to the pump station failure at another districts facility.

Surfside Colony C-Row Laterals
In a joint effort, during the repaving of the streets on C-Row, SBSD worked with the Surfside Colony to use this opportunity to inspect and replace damaged laterals, as necessary.  This allowed SBSD to fix any broken laterals without having to pay to tear up the street.

FOG Program
As part of our ongoing efforts to minimize fats, oils and greases (“FOG”) in our sewer lines, SBSD is working with the City of Huntington Beach to reach out to local restaurants to educate the restaurants about proper disposal of FOG waste.  FOGs increase the chance of a spill, and although we have not experienced a major spill, we want to keep it that way by minimizing FOGs in our lines.