Washington is once again following California down Insipid Ordinance Road with their latest mandate: Requiring local municipalities to regulate the water that runs off your car when you wash it in your driveway.
The state, however, isn’t banning car washing. Instead, it is requiring cities to adopt ordinances that prohibit anything other than clean stormwater from entering drains as part of a broader stormwater permit it issues.
While there are no federal regulations dealing specifically with residential car washing and stormwater pollution, local governments may prohibit car wash water if it’s a significant part of the stormwater problem.
The Environmental Protection Agency, along with numerous cities and states, are however urging residents to keep soapy wash water out of storm drains and have launched public education campaigns for more fish-friendly car washing.
Just like seat belt laws, and now hands-free phone laws, they’re starting out all friendly and not-a-primary-offense-like. Give it five years under the Democrats and you’ll be having the kids keep an eye out for Johnny Law coming up the street.
Or maybe they’re just trying to gin up some jobs for high schoolers by forcing folks to go to the drive-thru car wash?
I have some experience with the operation of waste water treatment systems. If storm water waste streams run into a treatment plant, the chemicals involved with washing a car are no problem, and so dilute to not even be noticeable.
Of greater concern would be salts from winter road treatment, and other chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers applied to lawns and shrubs. These chemicals often create problems in watersheds that have problems with weed growth like milfoil, which spread and kill rivers and fisheries. Car washing is the least of the problem.