Lincoln has a tunnel. Washington a monument. Even Hoover has a dam.

What about George W. Bush?

In San Francisco, “W” may soon stand for “wastewater.” On Tuesday, voters will consider commemorating the 43rd president’s legacy in a less than exalted way: renaming the city’s Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant as the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

In a city where only 9 percent of voters are registered Republicans, organizers of the tongue-in-cheek idea had little trouble gathering 12,000 signatures to put Proposition R on the ballot.

“People were lining up to sign it,” said Brian McConnell, a phone systems designer who hatched the idea last year in a Mission District bar with friends. “One way to look at a sewage plant is in terms of its contents — what we got stuck with — the Iraq war, a $10 trillion debt and a huge mess that needs to be cleaned up.”

The measure needs only a simple majority to pass.

In a brand of civics you won’t see as part of festivities in say, Lubbock, Texas, the Yes on R news conference at City Hall on Election Night will be hosted by a drag queen named “Peaches Christ.”

And as part of the official ballot arguments, supporters offered a haiku:

Need Bush memor’l?

Sewage plant available

How appropriate

Needless to say, the city’s beleaguered Republicans are not embracing the methane memorial.

“I don’t think it is funny. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of money,” said San Francisco Republican Party Chairman Howard Epstein.

“It’s disrespectful to the office. Are we going to name a brothel in Nevada after Bill Clinton? If you don’t like George Bush, OK, you don’t like him. But this has gone too far.”

City leaders say if the measure passes, it will cost about $50,000 to put up new signs and change all the stationery and letterhead. At first, managers of the city-owned plant said the election was disrespectful to the hardworking employees of the plant. But then their union, the SEIU, endorsed it.

The fecal fracas has gained worldwide attention.

“I just don’t think it dignifies a response,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino in June when asked about the president’s position.

Supporters plan to commemorate Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 with a synchronized flush of hundreds of thousands of San Francisco toilets, an action that would send a flood of water toward the plant, as Bush leaves the throne of power.

In recent weeks, they have asked San Francisco shop owners to tape posters in their windows that feature a picture of Bush emerging from a toilet, Alfred E. Neuman-like, with the words: “Help put the #1 guy on the #2 building.”

McConnell says if the sewage plant — which sits along Ocean Beach near San Francisco Zoo and treats 17 million gallons of effluent a day — is renamed, it will become a tourist attraction and a fitting memorial for the man he considers the worst president in history.

“The contents of the facility represent the quality of what we got in the last eight years,” he said.

Contact Paul Rogers at progers@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5045.