Have you ever been close to the water and wondered if it’s safe to enter? Thanks to the new law, the public has an easy way to quickly check if a body of water has been recently contaminated by sewage.
under law The Washington State Ecological Agency, which passed this year, must develop and publish the website by June 2026 with a reported sewage runoff notification, including the amount of runoff, the level of treatment for the runoff, and other details.
Local government wastewater treatment operators are already needed to report sewage runoff to the ecology. However, this information is not easily accessible or timely available, says Mindy Roberts, Puget Sound Program Director for Washington Protection Action at Advocacy Group.
This anecdotally led to swimmers, kayakers and people underwater or near where people with dogs have sewage flows, she said.
Roberts said the law ensures that leaked information reaches people and “can make wise decisions about whether they will expose themselves or not.”
“For now, it’s extremely difficult for anyone looking to plan a trip around the state’s waterways to know if the beach is safe from recent sewage pollution,” said Peter Steelquist, Washington’s policy manager in public testimony before Congress.
Climate change is expected to promote increased activity in the storm, which could lead to impacts on atmospheric rivers, higher king tides and infrastructure, Steelquist said during his testimony.
“All of these factors are contributing to increased sewage runoff and stormwater overflow where we all love to play now,” he said.
King County already has a website reporting that it “combined sewer overflow” for its 2013 consent order, Roberts said. These sewage runoffs occur in parts of the county where domestic sewage and stormwater flow into the same set of pipes, and heavy rain usually overwhelms treatment plants.
Roberts said there are also cases of lesser known in sewer systems when back-ups from equipment breakdowns or clogged with cleaners, Bacon greases or other solids can flow into water as the streets are flooded with roads.
Under the new law, it will be reported to one website across the state rather than the current “fragmented” system, making it easier for the public to search for these types of spills, Roberts said.
During public testimony on the bill, ecology representatives said the department receives about 300 sewage runoff reports per year. Roberts also said in his testimony that department interns have analyzed more than 200 spills from 12 wastewater treatment operators from the past five years and found that the spill ranges in the 10 million gallons, some of which reach the waterways.
“I was shaky when I learned from (her) research that dozens of outflows had happened in my community,” Roberts said in his testimony. “I didn’t know. I’m a very complicated community member and sewage is literally part of my everyday work.”
In the original bill, ecology required ecology to prepare maps on the website, an annual report on sewage runoff, but these components were taken out due to concerns that they would increase the bill’s costs, Roberts said.
