A water reclamation plant disguised as a Japanese garden

The Tillman Water Reclamation Plant turned unpopular civic infrastructure into a public landmark good enough to stand in for Starfleet Academy

one of the best public works projects: the tillman water reclamation plant & japanese garden [sic]. san fernando valley. take an unpopular thing & make it nice. so nice in fact; it stood in as starfleet academy in Star Trek TNG ht
Ranked #25 on backlist 2026-05-16 (16 May 2026 UTC) · by (Ted Nyman) ·

How it ranks: Backlist reads my Twitter/X timeline, scores every tweet for substance with an LLM rubric (not engagement), and publishes the daily top picks with a one-line takeaway. Curated by Surya Dantuluri.