I think generally it should not be allowed. A big component of soap is phosphates, which promote algae growth so you really don't want it in your rivers.
Some cities have combined or separated sewer systems. Even if combined, it may be designed to overflow during heavy rain, so it's not a guarantee that car wash water with dirt, soap and oil will not go into into a stream somewhere although in that case you're also sending literal shit there. Also when combined, there may still be old infrastructure that drains to a stream or river so a blanket ban is a good idea.
Typically a car wash would be required to have an oil-water separator (with maintenance records and occasional checks) and discharge effluent to the sanitary sewer. Not sure about everywhere but in Vancouver (I have experience working in water treatment there) you also need to have the car wash covered and send collected rainwater to the storm sewer.
Perhaps there could be a middle ground where you're allowed to wash in your driveway but only with a specific soap, and not allowed to degrease your engine bay. There's basically no way to enforce that though,.
Also might as well note here that in Vancouver storm drains that connect to the storm sewer have little fish stenciled by them.
> I think generally it should not be allowed. A big component of soap is phosphates, which promote algae growth so you really don't want it in your rivers
That's fair, but it doesn't explain why the bylaw won't even let you rinse the mud off your car with nothing but water
I operate an auto detailing shop. As part of that I've done some research and spoken with my local city (100k+ pop.) officials about this. It's actually quite logical.
First, there's a distinction between sewer vs. stormwater. Sewer lines go to a treatment facility that's built specifically to take all the bad stuff out of the water before flushing that treated water into your local streams. Washing your car into a sewer drain, all good.
Stormwater drains shuttle water directly into your streams.
Stormwater drainage is purpose-built to handle the overflow rain during storms, and only that. In fact, the first goal of stormwater management is to not drain it at all! You want the stormwater to flow through your local ecosystem naturally, generally as groundwater. Nonetheless, storms conspire to drench our non-porous surfaces (asphalt, concrete, etc.) at a rate or duration above the designed for drainage of the system, resulting in overflow. Overflow leads to things like flooding or public safety hazards for cars driving on undrained roads, so a secondary goal of stormwater management becomes shuttling excess water out of the local ecosystem.
What's all this have to do with washing the mud off your car? Well, the first goal of stormwater management is to keep it in your local ecosystem. So, if you can ensure the runoff from washing your car goes into your grass or a specifically designed catch basin, then you're all good. But, if you wash it off into the stormwater drain, well then you're using that drain for a purpose it wasn't built to serve. Your water is neither excess nor should it bypass your local ecosystem. As far-fetched as it may sound, that mud may have local nutrients, pollen, chemicals, etc. that could serve your local ecosystem, and by bypassing that you are disrupting your ecosystem's natural cycles.
A note to the astute reader that says well, we already disrupt our ecosystems with other human activities. Yes, you are correct. That doesn't mean that we can't nor shouldn't take actions to minimize or eliminate further disruptions when they are within our sphere of control. We must strive to find a balance in ecological systems.
There's also an enforcement aspect, too - it becomes significantly harder for police to determine the difference between "I was hosing it down" and "I was hosing it down and washing it with soap" so they just ban all of it.
> Some cities have combined or separated sewer systems.
I wonder how many cities still have a combined system. At least where I live, I could totally see the amount of water coming from the sky regularly beating the amount coming from household drains. Along those lines, our city is spending money replacing private sewer laterals (normally a 10-20K job the homeowner is responsible for) just to cut down on the water intrusion the old laterals (especially party lines) let into the sewer. It's cheaper to pay for the new laterals than it is to build a larger treatment plant.
>I think generally it should not be allowed. A big component of soap is phosphates, which promote algae growth so you really don't want it in your rivers.
Shouldn't we ban people showering under the same logic? I use about the same amount of soap to wash my car as I do in the shower, but I shower a lot more often.
It makes more sense if your run-off and sewage are treated separately - assuming the car washes get theirs treated.
My understanding is that the UK has a combined system where rainwater and waste go into the same system and is all treated the same. More because of history than because anyone now thinks that is a good idea. Maybe someone who knows more about this could confirm?
I'm in the UK and our privatised water companies seem to mostly just pump stuff into the nearest river or coastline, untreated. Treating the sewage or building infrastructure would eat into their dividends and bonuses. Trebles all round!
In some cities in the PNW this law is to protect the fish and wildlife, because storm drains connect to the streams. You're allowed to wash your car in your driveway so long as it drains onto your lawn or the sewer.
In the northern foothills here bordering Phoenix, Arizona, to the north, there are an understandable number of automated carwashes.
However, i've found no manual (pressure wash sort) carwashes, which are easy to find in California and Illinois, for two examples. I don't know why this is.
Could it be that single family homeownership is higher there?
I can kind of speak for some of L.A.'s use of manual car washes. There's many who live in apartments or places that don't have places to wash at home. Manual car washes fill the void for people that want to clean their own car but don't have space.
it might be. It might also be a water conservation thing, somehow, but I can't see how that would work unless they filter the water used in teh carwashes that are automatic and reuse them in some way not feasible with the power-wash-for-quarters sorts of stalls.
The pay/pressure wash systems I've ever seen are all older, I don't know how many new ones they're building. I suspect automatic washers are cheap "enough" now that you can't build a new pay to wash that comes out substantially cheaper.
When I was a kid it was $2 for the power wash for quarters type, and $10 for automatic or by hand, now it's $8 for the automatic decades later.
In Chicago, it's always good to rinse the salt off your car to prevent rust. I recall doing this several times during many winters there. Never had a problem with rust on any car I owned.
Yes but they still degrade relatively quickly when managed correctly so a burst of pollutants whenever it rains is better than a constant low level exposure from people washing their cars all the time.
Regions where it rains frequently like the PNW have rain gardens, vegetated swales, catch basins/filters, and other mitigation strategies all over the place whereas e.g. California might just have them throughout the drainage system like at the end of the LA river.
> In my city you're not allowed to wash your car in your driveway
How does this even get enforced? Are the police driving by everyone’s house regularly, looking for those dastardly hoses? Or do they rely on nosey neighbors ratting on each other? I can’t imagine this is the most important crime for the local law enforcement to be investigating.
In Sweden washing a car at home is discouraged and depending on how you read the law can be illegal (it is not illegal per se to wash a car at home, but it is illegal to to let out untreated water into nature - and since waste water from car washing is not untreated and probably contains oil and metals, it is most likely illegal on this provision).
Enforcement is on a council-by-council basis, but of course in urban areas I imagine this is pretty hard to enforce. In rural settings it must be pretty much impossible. Having said that, I haven't really seen many people at all washing their car at home. Maybe it depends where you live, if you have neighbours who do it a lot it probably feels like everyone does it.
In the last few years, there have been a load of "wash your own car" car wash stations opening up. They're cheap (you can do the car for <100kr - $10 or so), way less than the drive in station, and have things you wouldn't have at home (e.g. cleaning underneath the car, handy for washing off the salt that has come off the road in winter). Not really enforcement but a pretty effective way of nudging people to doing the "right thing".
In my area it’s mostly done by the water department itself. They have people that drive around documenting violations, and the owner is directly billed. This is mostly done overnight.
They also have a hotline for tattletales and HOAs and the police can also report you.
IMO someone would have to be pretty anal retentive to get bent out of shape over just hosing down your car with a hose. That's not really any different than what happens when it rains hard. My local jurisdiction only cares about the car wash soap you use. Even then, they just ask that we use phosphate-free soap, not that we don't wash the car in the driveway at all.
You'll never need to worry about this if you try using Optimum No Rinse waterless wash. It cleans and details your entire car with 2.5gal of water. I've been using thus for over two years now and will not wash our cars any other way.
I can wash my car in my driveway, but last summer when my city implemented water use controls (due to drought conditions), they didn't allow it. Oddly enough, they didn't restrict commercial car washes.
Consider this: If I were to say, “In Tokyo, people stand on the left side of the escalator and walk on the right side, opposite to Osaka,” would you automatically assume I'm a Tokyo resident? Probably not, right?
Had the initial commenter simply replaced “In my city […]” with the actual city name, it would likely have been interpreted as general knowledge they picked up along the way. Sure, some might mistakenly assume they hail from or currently reside in said city, but in reality, it’s not a big deal. Take me, for instance—I live in Copenhagen and I’m 100% sure no one will be able to do anything useful with that information.
Providing context is key, especially in online forums like this. Simply stating the city name would have enriched the discussion far more than leaving it ambiguous.
> would you automatically assume I'm a Tokyo resident? Probably not, right
For something that you can pick up just by visiting? Maybe not. For information like this, about specific bylaws that are relevant for homeowners or car owners? Yeah absolutely I would assume they live there
I guess it's too hard on the storm drains to have soap and dirt and stuff going down them
Or maybe city council is just in some kind of racket with car wash owners or something
But either way, that's why we have so many car washes here... And it sucks ass