Classic boaters venturing to Poulsbo this weekend will be getting a smelly welcome, and it won’t be the potential after affects of the prize-winning chili. No, it’ll be from the 350,000 gallons of sewage which is currently lacing the waters of Liberty Bay and beyond.

Thursday’s massive release from Keyport into local waters should be raising more than hands to noses, it should also be raising eyebrows. How safe is our current system and will improvements in Poulsbo and Kingston be enough to ensure that one of them doesn’t earn the name change to “Brownsville” in the future?

We sincerely hope not.

But 350,000 gallons is no small matter, especially when North Kitsap residents and organizations have made such huge strides in recent years to breath new life into the waterways.

This spill is an enormous step back for local environmentalists who have given so much of themselves and will likely taint water tests here for a long time.

If anything good comes out of this, we hope that it will at least serve as a lesson. That folks who pushed for additional sewer capacity under Liberty Bay will learn from this mistake and will do everything in their power to ensure similar atrocities don’t occur here in the future.