Friday, January 13, 2012

Olympic Hills sunset

Did you miss tonight's dramatic sunset? We sure hope not. Below is a view from a rooftop on 25th Avenue NE.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Walk Report - Monday, January 9th

There were four of us out last night. We picked up two small bags of litter and noted three new graffiti tag locations ( they were reported today ). The sidewalk heave on 125th on the north side just west of 26th was repaired by SDOT. SDOT also had replaced a no parking sign at the dead end on 28th Ave.

We looked carefully around the dead end at 28th Ave for any signs of needles while picking up litter. None were found. One member of our group had lead a litter pick up crew earlier that day along Lake City Way and reported that they found eight used hypodermic needles. 

If you find a hypodermic needle, do not touch it with your bare hands. Wear disposable gloves and put the needle in a sharps container. You can get sharps containers from the firemen at Fire Station 39. They can also dispose of the sharps for you when you bring the container back. 

A call was put in to DPD regarding what to do with human feces and bottles of urine. They directed the question to King County Public Health who, when called, said that the question should be directed to Seattle DPD and that they only deal with issues related to rodents / rodent droppings. There appears to be a question about whose jurisdiction this is and it was brought up by the King County Health Department rep that the city of Seattle reduced the annual payment to King County Health for their services from 850k to 800k, hence necessitating a reduction in their services. Their recommendation for dealing with a bottle of urine was to bring it into the house and dump it down the toilet so that it does not go into the storm drain and, eventually, into the waterways. Their recommendation for dealing with human feces was to pick it up like you would dog poo ( with a bag ) or to wash it away ( and hence down the storm drain ) with a hose. 

There was discussion about inviting the Mayor out for one of our walks to discuss some of these issues. 

Here are some links to the King County Health site on the topic.