Dog Waste Removal in Bremerton

Port Washington Narrows divides Bremerton into an east half and a west half, connected by the Manette Bridge and the Warren Avenue Bridge, so a route through town gets planned around spans rather than around mileage. Sinclair Inlet holds the south end, Dyes Inlet the north. The city has already mapped where all of it drains. Bremerton's 2022 stormwater planning submittal delineates twenty-four drainage basins inside the city and 116 mapped sub-basins, one catchment for every outfall. Your lawn sits in one of them.

That is not trivia here. The 2012 Dyes and Sinclair TMDL implementation plan directed Bremerton's stormwater program to put pet waste stations on city parks and shoreline property, and to concentrate them where people actually walk dogs. Ecology's finding on the two inlets is that fecal coliform poses a risk to human health and limits the marine waters where shellfish can be harvested safely. Dog waste removal in Bremerton answers to a permit obligation, not to tidiness.

Bremerton already paid for the expensive half of that problem. Roughly $50 million went into separating the combined sewer system over two decades, cutting overflows by 99 percent in both volume and frequency, and Ecology determined in February 2011 that the city had met the plan's obligations. The sewage side of it is finished. What comes off a lawn is not.

A fine is attached, too. Under BMC 7.15.010(q), failing to remove your animal's waste from public or private property, absent that owner's permission, is a Class 1 civil infraction, with a base penalty of $125 that rises to $250 for a second offense inside twelve months and $500 after that. The city's own pet waste page runs the volume math: 15,000 dogs in Kitsap County at three quarters of a pound apiece, more than 11,000 pounds every day. It also answers the flushing question, which trips people up. Only if your house is on public sewer, never on septic.

There is nowhere much else to send the dog, either. The Bark Park has occupied a temporary spot at Pendergast Regional Park, 1199 Union Ave, since November 5, 2005, while a permanent site at Stephenson Canyon stays a long range goal. Off your own property the code wants a leash anywhere outside a city dog park, the 0.7 mile loop at Lions Park on Lebo included, which leaves the back yard doing most of the work. Dooky Squad runs it on a set schedule, from Manette and East Park to Charleston and Rocky Point, and the bags go in your can or leave with the crew, whichever you set up.