Activists hope to honour President Bush with sewage plant

Jun 25, 2008, 14:37 GMT

San Francisco - Other presidents have Mt Rushmore, statues, airports and libraries.

When US President George W Bush leaves office in January he may well have another monument to his achievements: a San Francisco sewage plant.

That's the idea behind a ballot initiative that's likely to be put before San Francisco voters in the November elections when the satirically-named Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco will ask voters to approve changing the names of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W Bush Sewage Plant.

During the inauguration, the group also wants supporters to participate in a 'synchronized flush,' which they say would be a 'fitting monument to this president's work.'

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the group already appears to have 8,500 signatures, more than enough to put the proposal to a vote.

And despite the dismissive remarks of local Republican chairman Howard Epstein, that it's just 'typical San Francisco crazies,' the measure would appear to have a good chance of success in this famously quirky and liberal city.

In 2006 a proposition calling for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney passed with 58 per cent of the vote.

'This is the way the democratic process is supposed to work, even though it's a silly idea in some people's eyes,' organizer Brian McConnell was quoted as saying. 'Fifty years from now in a civics class, students will learn about the Lincoln Memorial, that other presidents are on Mount Rushmore - and George W Bush got a sewage plant.

'It will prompt people to ask why, and they can discuss the Iraq war, and everything that led to it. People want to forget bad moments of history, and this is our way of making sure that doesn't happen,'

The biggest opposition he foresees in the ambitious plan is that people in the Democratic stronghold might oppose naming anything after the 43rd president.