The following is written by Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow:

It’s not always pleasant to think about what we flush or run through our disposals each day, but it is important to know how it affects what we eat and drink. On Monday night, the City Council took a field trip, touring our Wastewater Treatment Facility.  While maybe not on the hot list of tour sites, it’s vital part of a clean community and a growing region.

If you like to eat fish or kayak in Puget Sound or visit the beach, you want that treatment facility doing top-notch work because it’s filtering and burning what we all flush every day to make sure the only thing sent back to our rivers, sound and ocean is surprisingly clean.  In fact, the EPA keeps raising the standards, which is why we have to expand and improve – and why sewer utility rates go up. None of us like paying more, but then again, none of us want to return to the days of outhouses, failing septic tanks, or of raw sewage flowing into our streams, or down our streets like it did during colonial days.

In fact, the treatment facility is quite a gem, consistently working at a high level of efficiency, treating more–ahem, shall we say “product”?–with less staff than most of our neighbors.  It uses technology, professional staff and even a lot of chemistry to protect our food and water supply.  And, because we pasturize the biosolid so it’s safe for gardeners to use, we don’t have to truck it every day to Eastern Washington.  This saves fuel costs and improving air quality for the entire region.

So, while it seems a topic that only my grandson could love, we really should acknowledge that the Sumner Treatment Facility is doing a great job keeping our food fresh, our beautiful rivers and Sound clean, and our community green.