Cost to clean up sewage leak at SF Hall of Justice? $315,146

Cleaning up sewage isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. It also comes with a hefty price tag.

The estimated cost for the cleanup work from the sewage flood at the Hall of Justice in January is $315,146. That’s about three times the annual salary of a San Francisco supervisor.

According to the cleanup vendor, Belfor Property Restoration, the cost breakdown is as follows: $286,794 for the remedial cleaning, demolition of affected walls and replacement of the damaged areas, plus another $28,352 for the damaged carpet.

The estimated price tag doesn’t include the overtime the city will have to pay employees who worked to plug the leak in the immediate aftermath of the flood. It also doesn’t take care of the infrastructure problems that led to the problem in the first place.

City officials attribute the sewage overflows to inmates jailed at the Hall of Justice stuffing towels, sheets and spoons down the toilets.

The leak took place on Jan. 3, when foul-smelling water and fecal matter seeped from some ceilings into the San Francisco district attorney’s offices. It forced about 30 employees to evacuate the building at 850 Bryant St. and knocked the district attorney’s computer network offline when water got into the server room.

The flood underscored the dilapidated state of the building, not to mention the fact that the city has deemed it seismically unsafe for more than 20 years.

Last month, City Administrator Naomi Kelly said conditions are so bad at the Hall of Justice that she will do whatever it takes to empty most of the building by 2019, several years earlier than planned.

— Emily Green