City officials marked a new beginning Wednesday at the Regional Water Quality Control Plant at the Palo Alto Baylands where work will begin on a new sewagei-treatment facility.

The new sludge-dewatering and load-out facility will replace the city's two incinerators, which are scheduled to be decommissioned.

"The global economy would be a mess if Silicon Valley couldn't flush its toilets," Palo Alto City Manager James Keene said at a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday morning.

Plant Manager Jamie Allen, an engineer for the plant since 1998, said that when the new facility located at 2501 Embarcadero Way is complete, there will be trucks taking 68 tons of dewatered sludge away a day, which adds up to roughly 25,000 tons a year. Allen said he is excited about the new facility.

"If you had a car from 1972 it probably wouldn't get you to work everyday," Allen said, referring to the polluting incinerators.

At the new facility, sewage will be treated, dehydrated and then dropped into the trucks, which will take and dewatered sludge off site, Assistant Director of Public Works Phil Bobel said.

The city has incinerated the waste that comes into the facility since 1972 and, in doing so, has emitted a large amount of greenhouse gases.

With furnaces continually burning natural gas at the plant, they release more than 20,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to a 2009 analysis by a citizens task force.

"It's the biggest single source of greenhouse gases in the city," former Palo Alto Mayor Peter Drekmeier told the Weekly back in 2014.

The plant is owned by Palo Alto and manages the waste from surrounding cities -- Stanford, East Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View.

The total cost of the new facility will come to around $30 million, with each city footing a portion of the bill. Barring delays, the facility is expected to be completed by March 2019.