After one of the wettest winters we can remember, we’re relishing the scents of spring and every sun break. And as we think of all the rain that has fallen in recent months, we’re so grateful that deep wells of standing water are not in front of our community’s homes. Our advocacy against unsafe, unfair and untested bioswales proposed during the Barton Combined Stormwater Overflow (CSO) project planning helped us avoid this.

We understand that CSOs are a very real and damaging issue for our environment. As recently as February, a failure of the West Point plant led to millions of gallons of sewage overflow into Puget Sound. We continue to follow King County’s CSO project work in our area e.g. Murray and now an impending Chelan CSO on the northeastern edge of West Seattle.

King County declared their CSO project in the Westwood and Sunrise Heights neighborhoods complete in fall 2015; it’s something we will never forget and we’re hopeful others may learn from our experience. We’ll continue to maintain this site and update it as needed to promote safe stormwater infrastructure.