Dog Waste Removal in Puyallup / South Hill

Ask where Puyallup ends and you will get an argument. The city proper holds about 44,000 people. South Hill, the unincorporated community directly south of the valley, holds close to 65,000 across roughly nineteen square miles, bisected by Meridian Avenue East. Pierce County does not treat the line as settled, either. Its South Hill planning page asks residents to mark on a map which areas feel like South Hill to them and tells them there is no right or wrong answer.

South Hill Mall is the anchor everybody actually navigates by, and where it sits on Meridian tells you most of what you need to know about the traffic. The commercial spine runs the length of Meridian, the neighborhoods hang off it east and west, and the practical consequence for a service run on a fixed route is that crossing Meridian in the afternoon costs real time. We build the South Hill day around staying on one side of it for as long as possible, which is why your visit tends to land at a consistent time of day rather than drifting across the week.

The most revealing local fact about dog waste here is one the city put in writing. Puyallup coordinates with the Washington State Fair to limit animal waste entering storm drains, by allowing catch basins to drain to the sanitary sewer during fair events. For about twenty days each September the drainage at the 9th Avenue SW grounds gets rerouted on purpose because of what animals leave behind. There is a reason for that care. The Puyallup River is under a fecal coliform cleanup plan with Deer Creek and Meeker Creek both named as contributors, Clarks Creek carries a fecal coliform plan of its own, and the city's implementation work on Clarks Creek includes a pet waste program.

The ground under the two halves is not the same, and the hill is not even consistent with itself. The USDA soil survey for Pierce County puts South Hill in the Alderwood-Everett association, which is a mixture rather than one thing: Alderwood is glacial till with a weakly cemented layer beginning about three feet down, Everett is loose outwash that water runs straight through, and they make up roughly a third and a fifth of the association respectively. Two houses on the same block can behave nothing alike. The valley floor is river alluvium instead, well to moderately well drained, farmed since about 1870 for flower bulbs, cane fruit and vegetables.

The city runs two off-leash areas. The one near downtown is two thirds of an acre, fully fenced, tucked between Clarks Creek Park North and South at 926 18th St SW, on the same creek that cleanup plan is named for. The other is off Shaw Road at Rainier Woods Park. Both post the same instruction in their rules: use plastic bags to clean up after your dog. That covers the park. Dooky Squad covers the yard, on a schedule, valley or hill.