Wash your car on gravel, grass or some other absorbent surface, not a concrete driveway. The earth helps filter the suds, road grime and metals, keeping them from flowing straight into the river.
For a charity carwash, block the storm drain and pump the runoff into a sanitary sewer drain or onto grass.
Use a nozzle on the hose so the water doesn't run continuously. (Saves on the water bill, too.)
Use only biodegradable soaps.
Source: Stormwater Manager's Resource Center, an EPA-funded advisory group
It's as much a part of American summer as hot dogs or lawn mowing: You park the family truckster on the driveway, lather it up and hose away the grime, cooling off in the process.
There's no law against it. But state and city officials whose job is to monitor what goes down storm drains and into the river wish you wouldn't. Or at least wish you'd adjust your routine.
Governments in a few places around the country have cracked down on the car washing tradition. For example:
--Washington state is requiring cities to adopt laws banning anything except clean rainwater from entering storm drains. That means no soap, no grime, no metals, no oil or other gook from car wash runoff.
“The soaps are just as toxic as some of the chemicals we regulate in the industrial (sector). They kill fish,” said Sandy Howard, a Washington Department of Ecology spokeswoman.
--Other ecology-minded West Coast cities have gone further. The Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica fines residents $500 if water runoff leaves their property.
--Fairfax, north of San Francisco, considered a residential car washing ban recently but relented in the face of public opposition. “While we were at it, we decided not to kill Mom and apple pie,” Mayor David Weinsoff said.
Rather than adopt car washing bans, most states and cities, including Nebraska and Omaha, simply try to teach the public about what not to put in storm drains.
Trying to police hundreds of thousands of potential pollution sources across a city — Can you imagine car wash cops? Neighbors ratting out neighbors? — would be harder than scrubbing bugs off a grille.
Officials say government effort is better spent watching for large pollution sources, such as industries or construction sites.
“It is important to get the message across to people that we want just stormwater going down our drains,” said Brian McManus, a spokesman for the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality.
Marty Grate, Omaha's environmental services manager, said the city's most recent ordinance on storm drains, drawn up to meet federal requirements, specifically allows runoff from residential car washing to flow into storm drains.
That means you aren't breaking the law by hosing off your sedan in the driveway. But it doesn't mean water-quality officials are happy about it.
They'd rather you drove to a commercial carwash — which must treat its wastewater — or at least pulled onto your lawn or gravel before turning on the hose. That way the runoff can soak into the natural filter of the ground instead of running straight into the fish's home.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rather than trying to regulate residential car washing, allows local governments to impose bans if they see fit and encourages campaigns to teach the public about storm drains — namely that, unlike household drains that carry water to a treatment plant, they empty straight into rivers and are the most common route for waterway pollution.
Soaps in particular dissolve the protective mucous layer on fish and natural oils in their gills, making fish more susceptible to disease.
Car washing doesn't top the worry list in the Midlands, said Amanda Grint, water resources engineer for the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District, which advises local governments about runoff and helps coordinate their efforts.
Fertilizers, both agricultural and residential, are a higher concern, she said, as is overwatering, which carries more of all kinds of pollutants into rivers.
“Probably the No. 1 priority is to slow the water down,” she said, which is why the NRD likes to encourage rain gardens, rain barrels, downspouts aimed onto the lawn instead of the driveway and other steps to keep runoff from gushing into the gutter.
This report includes material from the Associated Press.
Contact the writer:
444-1140, roger.buddenberg@owh.com
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