BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Some residents in Bellingham and Sudden Valley will soon have better-protected mail.

United States Postal Service (USPS) Customer Service Manager Zoe Russom addressed what she called a recent rise in mail theft in a letter to Sudden Valley residents on Saturday. She says the USPS is taking steps to replace the locks on all cluster mailboxes in Bellingham with more secure locks, starting with Sudden Valley.

Russom says the locks have been approved and ordered, but there is no anticipated delivery date for them yet.

She’s advising residents to pick up their mail daily and use a blue collection box to send any outgoing mail to reduce the chances of mail theft.

It comes as an ordinance in Bellingham that requires landlords to install locked mailboxes at their rental units took effect on Wednesday, Jan. 1.