Dog Waste Removal in DuPont

DuPont fits into about 5.8 square miles and holds two housing stocks with almost nothing in common. The DuPont Company started building what is now the Historic Village in 1909 to house workers at its explosives plant, and by 1917 the company town ran to 100 homes. The company sold that housing to private residents in 1951. The district went on the National Register in 1987, roughly bounded by Santa Cruz, Brandywine, DuPont, and Penniman, and people live in those houses today. The lots have had a century to grow trees and settle their turf.

Northwest Landing is the other DuPont. Weyerhaeuser took the plant property in the late 1970s after explosives production ended, brought in Calthorpe Associates to design it, and broke ground in 1994. Houses went on narrow deep lots with front porches, and the garages moved to back alleys so nobody on the sidewalk is walking behind a car backing out. The city's own plan dates its growth to that build: 588 residents in 1995, 8,199 by 2010. A backyard on one of those lots is a small rectangle you reach through an alley gate, and two dogs do not take long to fill it. Most dog waste removal in DuPont, WA happens on lots that size.

Wilmington Drive is how most people orient themselves here, and Farrelli's on it is the landmark that does the work a street sign cannot. That stretch is the middle of Northwest Landing, which means if you are near it you are in the alley-garage half of town rather than the Historic Village, and the two need different approaches. In the newer neighborhoods the gate we want is off the alley behind the house, not the path beside it. In the Village it is usually the side yard, through a fence that has been there a while. Tell us once which one applies and it stops being a question.

The other thing about DuPont is who lives here. Patriots Landing sits off I-5 next to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an upscale senior community that opened in 2005 and skews heavily toward retired military. That population is the clearest version of something Marq sees across his whole route. People in their seventies and eighties want the dog. What they do not want, and often should not be doing, is bending over wet grass on an uneven lawn through a Washington winter. Hiring the scooping out is what lets somebody keep the animal, and in this town that is a bigger share of the work than anywhere else we serve.

For a city this small, DuPont keeps a lot of ground to walk a dog on: 50 acres of developed parks and nearly 500 acres of open space and natural areas. DuPont PowderWorks Park on Bobs Hollow Lane is 24 acres of Garry oak woodland and restored prairie with an off-leash dog park in it. The Sequalitchew Creek Trail leaves from the Civic Center and drops 219 feet through a forested canyon, following the old Dynamite Train grade to the only access DuPont has to Puget Sound, 1.70 miles by the city's measure. A dog that has done either one brings a good share of it home.

There is also a local rule that catches people out. Municipal code 7.07.020 is titled Accumulation Prohibited, and it has nothing to do with the sidewalk. It says an owner may not let waste build up on their own property to the point of being offensive to other residents. The section after it makes every day a separate infraction. On an alley lot where the neighbor's kitchen window looks straight across your grass, somebody notices well before the city does. The Dooky Squad route through DuPont covers Northwest Landing and the Historic Village and runs out to Hoffman Hill, Bell Hill, Palisade Village, and Edmond Village.