--- # Public Works and Natural Resources Committee ## City of Bellingham | June 15, 2026 --- ## Meeting Overview The Public Works and Natural Resources Committee convened on the afternoon of June 15, 2026, as part of the City of Bellingham's block of afternoon committee meetings. The committee — chaired by Council Member Michael Lilliquist and also comprising Council Members Lisa Anderson and Jace Cotton — met in City Hall chambers with several non-committee council members present as well, including Council President Hannah Stone and Council Member Dan Hammill. The meeting got underway a few minutes late, delayed to ensure that audio and video recording systems were functioning for members of the public who could not attend in person — a small but telling detail about the city's commitment to public access. Two substantive items were on the agenda. The first was a major presentation on the city's forthcoming Comprehensive Sewer Plan and the rapidly evolving national landscape of wastewater solids handling technology — a subject that, as multiple council members noted, has been a source of ongoing deliberation, frustration, and hard-won institutional learning for nearly a decade. The second was a resolution recommending adoption of the 2027–2032 Transportation Improvement Program, the city's six-year capital planning document for its multimodal transportation network, which had already received a public hearing at the June 1st council meeting. Neither item was routine. The sewer presentation opened a window into genuinely unsettled terrain — a national wastewater industry grappling simultaneously with changing science on forever chemicals, aging infrastructure, and technologies that are promising but not yet proven at municipal scale. The TIP resolution, while procedurally straightforward, drew a thoughtful discussion about flexibility, community advocacy, and the long-term ambitions embedded in a document that can look deceptively like a list of line items. --- ## The Comprehensive Sewer Plan and the Future of Wastewater Solids Handling ### Setting the Stage Public Works Director Joel Funt opened the presentation with a note of context. Last fall, he reminded the committee, staff had appeared before council to describe the path forward for solids handling at Post Point, the city's wastewater treatment facility, following a notice of violation from the Northwest Clean Air Agency issued in March 2024. Now, he said, the city was turning its attenti…