Lynnwood pays $550K fine for running afoul of standards for sewage burning

Processing sewage — it’s a dirty job for any city.

One way governments choose to process that waste is through incineration, however, the process of burning waste has to adhere to strict standards, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act.

An aging incinerator the city of Lynnwood uses to process waste has become less efficient. At the beginning of 2020, it fell out of compliance with those standards. Now the city has paid more than $550,000 in penalties to the EPA. The city will have to decommission the incinerator to comply with the standards.

The EPA will receive progress reports from the city as it works toward that goal. The agency looks forward to receiving the first of those progress reports later this month, said Bill Dunbar, spokesperson for the EPA Region 10 office in Seattle.

Northwest Public Broadcasting's Lauren Gallup has the full story here.