Members of the Seaside Chamber of Commerce took a visit to one of the least-attended city attractions, but surely one of its most vital. At their weekly Wednesday meeting, about 20 visitors came to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, occasionally located by an acute sense of smell, at 18th Avenue and North Franklin.

The plant, which went into operation in 1986 and received an upgrade in 2001, uses 25 pump stations to process between 1 million and 2 million gallons of raw sewage daily over 30 miles of gravity sewer drains, nine miles of force mains and more than 600 manholes. The plant has a maximum capacity of 6.75 gallons daily.

“We don’t call it ‘poop,’” Wastewater Treatment Plant Foreman Tony Biamont said. “We call it sludge, or product.”

Biamont guided visitors on a tour of the facility, which processes Seaside’s wastewater so cleanly and efficiently that after treatment, lab testing showed numbers of bacteria so low that state regulators suspected the city might be making a mistake in their calculations.

After retesting, the numbers panned out and Seaside is recognized as a leader in sewage processing, Biamont said.

The department’s accomplishments are a work of five full-time staff members —with the receive help from thousands of bugs (“Our pets,” Biamont called them), which work their way through the raw sewage before it is sent through clarifiers and an ultraviolet disinfection system.

The end-product after processing is so fertile that it is a popular product at nearby farmlands.

Efforts at complete automation of the facility are underway, and Biamont anticipates that will free up staff to take care of other needed tasks.