Education / Bellingham
What’s the deal with the new salmon stencils around campus?
You may have stepped over a white salmon spray-painted beside a storm drain lately, with five words stenciled around it: NO DUMPING — DRAINS TO BAY. No, it isn't public art. It's a warning label, designed to correct something most people get wrong about how campus plumbing works.
Western Washington University published this notice on 2026-09-23. The following highlights are selected excerpts from the full source.
You may have stepped over a white salmon spray-painted beside a storm drain lately, with five words stenciled around it: NO DUMPING — DRAINS TO BAY. No, it isn't public art. It's a warning label, designed to correct something most people get wrong about how campus plumbing works.
Indoor water from sinks, showers, and toilets goes into the sanitary sewer and gets treated at the City of Bellingham's wastewater plant. Outdoors, rainwater that hits the ground funnels into the storm drain system instead — and the storm system drains directly to either a creek or Bellingham Bay.
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Western Washington University →Source publication: Sep 23, 2026
Source checked: Sep 27, 2026
Brief prepared: Sep 27, 2026
Automatically prepared from the linked public source. Source-digest highlights are quoted excerpts, not independent reporting. Dates and claims remain those of the source.
