Tag Archives: utilities

Why Seattle waste drivers aren’t getting pricked like sanitation workers in New York (but you should still dispose of your needles in a safer way)

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Automated garbage can lifts mostly protect Seattle collection drivers as the city’s garbage and recycling systems deal with an increase in consumer hypodermic needle use.

Seattle Public Utilities tells CHS it has not recorded an increase in needlestick injuries among contractors servicing the city. Unlike cities where crews manually lift trash bags, Seattle’s residential routes use mechanical arms to empty curbside carts directly into trucks, keeping drivers away from thin bags and protruding needles.

Cities with manual collection face different hazards. In New York City, where Department of Sanitation crews lift bags by hand, the agency has logged 49 needlestick injuries through early August. That surpassed the 46 incidents reported in 2025 and rose from 18 in 2020. The increase led New York to raise fines for improper needle disposal from $100 to $250. DSNY does not test recovered needles, but officials attribute the rise to more residents using at-home injectable drugs.

Manual collection remains standard in older, denser East Coast cities where narrow streets and row homes prevent automated side-loader trucks from operating. In Philadelphia, the city’s Community Life Improvement Program and Department of Sanitation deploy specialized teams equipped with puncture-resistant gear to clear corridors like Kensington, where union representatives with AFSCME District Council 33 have cited worker safety and punctures from loose needles during manual trash collection. In Boston, where contracted haulers physically toss bags into rear compactors, city public health officials conduct targeted daily needle sweeps along high-traffic corridors like the “Mass and Cass” area to clear loose syringes before curbside collection begins.

The municipal strain follows a broader shift documented by The New York Times, which reported last month that syringes and auto-injectors have migrated from clinical settings directly onto domestic bathroom vanities. According to the report, nearly one in five U.S. adults has tried an injectable GLP-1 medication like Ozempic, while consumer interest in injectable peptides and at-home fertility treatments like IVF — which grew nearly 40% between 2018 and 2026 — has routinely pushed medical sharps into households.

That proliferation has created new hazards in our waste The New York Times reports sanitation workers there frequently encounter exposed, loose needles when lifting plastic garbage bags, with one New York City department supervisor telling the paper that crews regularly open bags to find needles completely unshielded. The surge is also hitting retail businesses. The Times cited a Nordstrom Rack restroom that posted signs pleading with shoppers to stop dropping GLP-1 syringes into its public sharps containers due to the escalating fees the retailer pays to empty them. Continue reading →

Seattle City Council notes: environmental appeal reform, new City Light rates and expanded discount program, and why it is holding public hearings on bills it already passed

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The Seattle City Council has a busy Wednesday schedule of public hearings and legislative updates as it wraps up business approaching the annual late-August summer break.

  • Public hearings: The Seattle City Council has already acted on key pieces of legislation to put a pause on new data centers and speeding up the creation of shelter by legislating the expansion of tiny house villages in the city. Wednesday will bring separate public hearings on the two already approved bills. Under state law, local governments are granted the authority to quickly pass emergency land-use protections and seek public input immediately afterward. If a city or county governing body adopts a moratorium or interim zoning control without holding a public hearing beforehand, it must hold a public hearing on the adopted measure within 60 days of its adoption. Wednesday morning’s Land Use and Sustainability Committee session will include scheduled hearings on both of these recent emergency bills. Continue reading →

City digs in on three months of sewer work at 12th and Pike

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From the Seattle Development Services Office Water and Sewer Research Map

Commuters, residents, and businesses should be ready for disruptions as Seattle Public Utilities launches a multi-phase sewer repair project at the intersection of 12th Ave and E Pike. Starting July 8 and running through September, the project aims to replace aging, 115-year-old infrastructure. Continue reading →

Seattle City Light rolls out proposal for rate increases — including ‘large-load’ data centers

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(Image: CHS)

Seattle City Light has proposed an average 9.5% annual retail rate hike for 2027 and 2028 to combat an aging grid, inflation, and surging demand. The proposal includes changes that officials say will help Seattle be more fairly compensated for the energy demands of “large-load” data centers.

The Seattle City Council’s Parks and City Light Committee will hold a public hearing on the proposal Wednesday afternoon. Continue reading →

Seattle reshaping stormwater code for development, roadways, utilities, and maintenance

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Madison Valley Stormwater Storage Facility (Image: Karen Kiest Landscape Architects)

The Seattle City Council’s Governance and Utilities Committee chaired by District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth will consider legislation Thursday to update the city’s stormwater laws, shaping the requirements for development, roadways, utilities, and maintenance work in the city.

The committee’s work is hoped to update city code to meet requirements by the state’s July deadline.

The stormwater code guides how water can enter the city’s systems and shapes everything from project design to construction runoff. The code includes onsite stormwater management, flow control and water quality treatment requirements for development. Continue reading →

City Council looks at Seattle’s $4B plan for Skagit River Hydroelectric Project environmental improvements

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The Seattle City Council’s parks and City Light committee has a whopper on its hands Wednesday afternoon as takes up an ordinance authorizing Mayor Katie Wilson to settle a legal battle and sign new licensing agreements for the city’s Skagit River Hydroelectric Project dams.

The agreements would set new agreements with tribes and organizations including the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, the Upper Skagit and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, and the National Park Service. Continue reading →

Transformer explosion and outages as windy rain soaks Capitol Hill — UPDATE

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(Image: Alex Garland/CHS)

View latest outage updates here

So far, the power outage has remained limited after electrical equipment exploded and caught fire at E Aloha and Harvard Ave Saturday night.

Seattle Fire was called to Aloha and Harvard around 7:10 PM to the reported transformer fire.

Seattle City Light reported more than 700 customers without power including swaths of Broadway north or Roy.

Blustery winds and bursts of heavy rain were forecasted to continue through the night.

UPDATE 9:38 PM: City Light says another more than 6,000 customers are now without power in the Capitol Hill core. Continue reading →

Density, powerlines, and development: Here is why it still goes dark on North Capitol Hill

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(Image: CHS)

Day-long power outages from June-uary winds and rain that hit over 7,000 Seattle City Light customers in northern Capitol Hill earlier this month didn’t have enough of an impact for the city to consider installing underground power lines. The location of Capitol Hill power outages follows a pattern: in areas where multifamily housing development is less prevalent, power lines sit above ground and are left vulnerable to high winds and storms.

“The recent, sustained high wind event caused many outages throughout our service area including Capitol Hill,” Jenn Strang, media relations manager of SCL, told CHS.

Power outages are frequently caused by fallen trees, wind and ice. Strang said some instances are easier to fix than others, like the outage at 15th St and E Olive St.

“In the case of Monday’s outage at 15th Street East and East Olive, multiple wire spans and crossarms needed to be replaced and repaired which required different crews to complete the tasks,” Strang said.

Installing power lines underground to lessen the risk of outages in the area isn’t an option without larger scale housing development.

For one, it’s expensive — and the city wants developers to pay for it.

Nicholas Rich, client executive at IMEG—a national engineering and design consulting company— said many owners of newly built apartments want City Light to bury overhead power lines underground.

“If you put those underground you really improve the reliability in that respect locally,” Rich told CHS. “Usually a new developer won’t want to do that because City Light is perfectly happy keeping those overhead lines just the way they are.” Continue reading →

Hollingsworth’s parks and utilities committee gets down to business considering Cedar River trees

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An example of a healthy Cedar River forest from Wednesday’s briefing (Image: City of Seattle)

While most of the rest of the newly formed Seattle City Council committees have gotten off to slow starts this year with overviews and introductory presentations from the city departments they represent, the committee chaired by first-term District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth was all business Wednesday afternoon hearing the introduction of legislation that would clear the way for the city to thin the thickly grown forest around its highly protected Cedar River Watershed for “ecological thinning” and a limited timber sale.

The first bit of business pertained to issues far from Capitol Hill and the Central District in the city-owned forestland along the Cedar River in eastern King County.

With support from the Muckleshoot Tribe, the legislation that started with Hollingsworth’s committee Wednesday would authorize Seattle Public Utilities to sell timber as surplus property from the thinning effort as it works to clear 600 out of the watershed’s 90,638 acres over five years. Proceeds would go into the city’s Water Fund. Continue reading →

You really shouldn’t throw away a battery in Seattle

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Seattle Public Utilities

You shouldn’t throw batteries in the trash anyhow but now it is against the rules in Seattle. City officials are scrambling to get the word out after Seattle Public Utilities quietly put new rules into place banning batteries from the garbage to start 2024 to address an increase in dangerous fires, environmental, and cost concerns.

The new rules ban trash disposal of common household batteries, more powerful batteries for vehicles and tools, and embedded batteries found in electronics, toys, computers, monitors, and e-bikes,

It’s an honor system. Continue reading →