Spokane7
65°
July 14, 2011 in City
State money funds video telling people to clean up pet waste
‘Dog Doogity’ gives owners the business
OLYMPIA – Pollution in the Puget Sound is such a problem that a group trying to protect the ecosystem spent $27,000 in state money to make a catchy video, complete with dance steps, telling people how they can do something about it.
Pick up dog poop.
The 2 1/2 minute “Dog Doogity” video, which features rhythm and blues singer Martin Luther delivering the musical message to bag your doggie’s dooties, is a parody of the late ’90s hit “No Diggity” by Blackstreet. Released June 30, it is getting very positive responses, said Janet Geer of the city of Bothell and spokeswoman for a 60-community coalition in the “Puget Sound Starts Here” campaign.
The video is featured on the state-sponsored Puget Sound Partnership website and was made with $27,000 out of a $500,000 grant the state Department of Ecology gave the coalition. Designed for young, hip, urban adults, the video logged 30,000 hits on YouTube in just under two weeks with a 19-1 ratio of likes to dislikes.
“The response I’ve heard is, ‘This is great,’ ” Geer said.
Not everyone agrees. Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center, which keeps a close eye on budget issues, questioned whether state money should be spent on a video to tell people to pick up dog poop.
“In this economic climate, it raises a question of priorities,” Mercier said. “It seems a questionable way of marketing the idea.”
The video is part of the coalition’s larger campaign to address a wide range of problems facing the Puget Sound. Those range from industrial pollution and inadequate sewage treatment to overdevelopment and loss of key wildlife habitat. So where, exactly, does dog poop fit in the pantheon of Puget Sound problems?
“It’s a very important issue,” Geer said. According to some estimates, the area in and around the sound is home to some 1.2 million dogs, which produce just under 400,000 pounds of solid waste each day.
Canine waste always turns up in testing of E. coli in the sound, according to David Ward of the Puget Sound Partnership. Although some amounts of canine and other animal waste have always found their way from the surrounding land to the streams and rivers and into the sound, the problem is increasing because so much of the sound is now urban or suburban, which means more concrete and less soil to absorb the bacteria and nutrients from the growing piles of dog poop.
While it might not be the most important, insidious or dangerous pollution facing the sound, it is one that average citizens can tackle on their own, said Anne Dettlebach of the Department of Ecology, who oversaw the grant: “One of the easiest things you can do is to get people to clean up after their pets.”
Puget Sound Starts Here hired the Seedwell production company, which is run by three natives of Seattle. Peter Furia, one of the partners, said they had several issues they could tackle – washing cars on the driveway and letting the waste water run into the drain was another – but dog poop pickup offered a better campaign. They wrote parody lyrics to “No Diggity,” signed Luther and hired about 80 percent of the cast and crew from the Seattle area.
The casting call specified actors with dogs and a photo of the canine was required. They only worked with one professionally trained dog that could do certain things on command, Furia said. (The subject of the video was not one of those things.)
He said he thinks the video works on two levels: for the person who is sick of people who don’t clean up after their dogs, as well as for someone thinking of the bigger issue of cleaning up the sound.
The overall grant called for spending some money on a viral video, but the department had to approve the subject, Dettlebach said. They looked at several options, and while they never had a lengthy debate on whether to focus on something like PCBs rather than dog waste, they did decide this was a fun and creative way to address the issue.
The final cut was reviewed by Ecology Director Ted Sturdevant, who gave it a thumbs up, she added.
The $27,000 for the dog poop video is a very small part of $3 million in grants the Legislature approved in 2009 from money generated by the Model Toxics Cleanup Act, Dettlebach said. That money was divided among 15 different applicants around the state. Asotin County, for example, got money for a high-efficiency street sweeper.
“It’s not just about dog poop,” she said.
Supermajority for taxes unconstitutional, judge rules 
de3 on July 14 at 8:53 a.m.
What happens to the bird, deer, beer, moose, elk and other poop over there? Canada Goose poop is everywhere on the west side.
CougarGold on July 14 at 9:11 a.m.
“The $27,000 for the dog poop video is a very small part of $3 million in grants the Legislature approved in 2009 from money generated by the Model Toxics Cleanup Act, Dettlebach said. That money was divided among 15 different applicants around the state. Asotin County, for example, got money for a high-efficiency street sweeper.”
When it comes to priorities, I have to scratch my head every time I read something like this and compare it to some other budget decision made. For example, the other day there was a story about Washingtion being the only state to cut all funding for tourism. The last budget allowed for $2 million in promoting tourism in the state. This budget, nothing.
Tourism is about drawing people to our state who spend money on things like hotel rooms, food, shopping, sight-seeing, buying fuel for travel, and generally spending money in our state. All of these drive tax revenues as well as provide some level of employment. Tourism is something like a $1 billion gross revenue industry in this state and the return for promoting tourism seems quite clear.
We’ve gutted the $2 million budget for an industry that actually drives revenues while spending $3 million in grants to make a video for picking up dog poop, buying street sweepers, and who knows what other non-revenue expenses. Can anyone make any sense of this?
CougarGold on July 14 at 9:15 a.m.
I stand corrected on the tourism spending:
“Visitors to Washington spent some $15.2 billion in 2010, according to state figures.”
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/jun/28/state-tourism-takes-a-hit/
Makes it even harder to understand.
greenlibertarian on July 14 at 9:48 a.m.
Much adoo about nothing.
Next.
liberal_in_right_wing_land on July 14 at 12:03 p.m.
This seems like a stupid article that was posted only to get a political partisan fight going on in this thread. Please, don’t take the bait people.
MrNatural on July 14 at 12:11 p.m.
At Riverfront Park
One can hear the dogs bark
It’s the way that they talk
When they go for a walk
They wag and they sniff
And they leave little gifts
That their owners ignore
And we others abhor
As I stroll round the loop
I see piles of their poop
And I wish it were tagged
Or especially bagged
It adheres just like glue
To the sole of my shoe
With an odor quite foul
It provokes me to growl
For the dog owner’s task
Is it too much to ask
To avoid a bad rap
Please pick up their ….
DickAdams on July 14 at 6:29 p.m.
I wonder how much it would cost to clean up all the digested food through the bull in Olympia?