The city’s own numbers
Your sewer bill:Bellingham is about to spend millions rebuilding 1970s sewage incinerators its own consultants called the most expensive, dirtiest option. There’s a cheaper, cleaner way — and it’s ready today.
Email City Council
Uh oh..
Bellingham is poised to invest tens of millions of public dollars in outdated, polluting sludge incinerators—carrying serious cost, health, and environmental risks while ratepayers face 12% annual increases through at least 2027, and potentially through 2032 — even though, safer, less expensive options exist.
2022$52
By 2044$186.11
The truth
Bellingham is poised to invest tens of millions of public dollars in outdated, polluting sludge incinerators installed in 1974 to serve a fraction of Bellingham's current growing population. This bandaid solution carries critical cost, health, and environmental risks — even though safer, less expensive options exist.
When sewage is burned at low temperatures, toxic substances like carbon monoxide and persistent industrial chemicals (PFAS) are released into the air. These pollutants don’t disappear, they disperse into our neighborhoods and local waterways. On top of that, utility rates and costs increase on the people of Bellingham’s dime.
To listen to previous studies conducted by consultants and choose the cleaner, cheaper, safer solution to sewage management — even temporarily — to give time and budget in the coming years to find a longer term solution.
A cleaner, more affordable solution exists now. Let’s change the course for our community now and future generations.
The truth
We already know exactly what to do with garbage — we do it every single day, for every home in Bellingham. Somehow, when our human waste material arrives through a pipe instead of a truck, the city’s current answer is to burn it.
Trucks pick it up from every home in town. Routine.
It rides to a permitted, engineered facility.
Double-lined Subtitle D landfill. Monitored for decades.
No smoke. No stack. Nobody breathes it.
Handled. Quietly. Every day.
Pipes bring it from every home in town. Routine.
The plant cleans the water and squeezes out the solids.
In furnaces built in 1974, burning purchased gas.
What doesn’t burn goes up the stack or out to the bay.
Burned. Over our neighborhoods.
The burn
Incineration doesn’t destroy waste. It relocates it. PFAS breaks down at 2,012°F. These furnaces run at 1,140°F with a stack that releases toxic gas that settles back over town. It essentially works like a burn barrel with a giant torch on top to keep the smoke down. That’s what Bellingham has. Everything after incineration is just a question of which exit it takes.
Three exits. All of them end with us.
These furnaces
1,140°F
PFAS breakdown
2,012°F
PFAS + Heavy metals into the air
These furnaces run at ~1,140 F. PFAS destruction takes roughly 2,012 F. What is not destroyed does not disappear; it leaves through the stack, the scrubber water, or the ash. EPA has designated this facility a High Priority Violator under the Clean Air Act since March 2023.
Scrubber water to the Bay
What the scrubbers catch is piped – untreated – in front of the sewage plant into the bay. Biological treatment is not designed to remove heavy metals or dioxins, so what the scrubbers pull out of the air ends up in Bellingham Bay or back in the sludge. In roughly 50 years, this scrubber water has never been tested. The City's own June 2026 design report lists its chemistry as 'to be determined.
Gas costs to you
Billions of BTUs of purchased gas a year, and none of the heat comes back. Upkeep of an outdated system requires millions of dollars in updates just to keep up.
Landfill history
Small, open dumps scattered across towns and communities.
More sanitary landfills are introduced; local at scale.
EPA push for stronger environmental regulations; large regional landfills that are heavily regulated.
A modern landfill is a heavily regulated system, complete with base floors and landfill gas collection systems to capture harmful gases as they fill.
A double-lined engineered composite liner system keeps leachate & contaminants from escaping the landfill and allows for leachate collection & treatment.
Leachate is collected and managed on-site under permit, instead of being sent up a smokestack over a city.
Decomposing organic waste generates roughly 50% methane and 50% CO2 — this is captured through an intricate gasification system.
Temporarily landfilling, rather than patching together outdated systems that will not keep up with growth and regulations, offers a solution now that allows us to put our time and money in better solutions and minimize our health risk.
The City still hasn’t committed to stopping a $60 million upgrade of the aging incinerators. City Council hears it when constituents write in.
The letter’s already written. Add your name and send.
“Violation 1 alleges that the cumulative cost of changes made to each of the two Post Point sewage sludge incinerators (SSIs) has exceeded 50 percent of the original cost of building and installing the SSI unit.”
“In 2015, the City sewer utility emitted 40% of municipal emissions — by far the most of any sector.”
“Wastewater treatment is adversely impacted from 5 day multiple hearth furnace operation”
“This is going to be a huge sticker shock for the consumer, and it’s going to be painful for a lot of people.” — Bellingham City Councilmember Lisa Anderson
Follow Bellingham’s wastewater from our homes to Post Point, where solids are separated and ultimately burned through incineration.
“Not thrilled with incineration.” Even Bellingham City Council members have expressed concern — yet the City is moving ahead with a +$40M project to extend its use.
The City has received 65 proposals to upgrade the Post Point incinerators, and no one has said when a contract could be approved. Ask City Council to withhold approval, shut the incinerators down, and use landfilling as the bridge to a cleaner solution.
Clean. Bellingham. Now.
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