[ProtectOurFreedom]

If you ever visit San Fran, you've noticed that the "aromas" wafting up from the city street grates stinks like sewage. That's because San Francisco uses a "Combined Sewer," the only coastal city in California to do so. A combined sewer system collects and treats both wastewater and stormwater in the same network of pipes. Water flows through most of the sewers using gravity. Stormwater enters the combined sewer system through building roof drains or the catch basins along the street and gets treated at city plants just like the wastewater that goes down your household drain.

When I first moved to SF in the summer of 1973, the stench arising from city street grates just sickened me. It is so gross.

See San Francisco Water, Power, and Sewer Our Combined Sewer.

Here's a cute little cartoon that shows how innocent and simple this design approach is...in theory:

What it doesn't show is those pedestrians gagging and passing out from the noxious fumes arising from the city street grates.

[octex]

If you ever visit San Fran, you’ve noticed that the “aromas” wafting up from the city street grates stinks like sewage.
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Remember the lyric line from a 1970s popular song?

“If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.”

Just like the line from Ring Around the Rosy about posies in the pocket (about the plague in Europe), the flowers were meant to offset the horrible stench.