FYI June 19, 2012 Fish-friendly car wash kits available TACOMA — Fish-friendly car wash kits are available for free at several Pierce County locations through a program by the county's Public Works and Utilities Surface Water Management Division. The kits keep soap, oil and other pollutants from entering storm drains and flowing into streams, rivers and Puget Sound. A storm drain insert and pump send dirty water to the sewer system or a grassy area. The kits also come with a garden hose, extension cord and instructions, and a large sign to let people know the car wash is fish-friendly. Information is at www.piercecountywa.org/carwash or (253)798-2725.
Learn something new everyday. All this time I've been washing my car wrong. I think that I will still use the car wash at the gas station.
Interesting. I back my truck up onto the lawn to wash it. I've read that weed killer, lawn fertilizer, and other products that are used for yard care all rinse into the Puget Sound and other waterways as well and have been building up in the Puget Sound. I've since started using a propane torch to control weeds around the house. I also don't fertilizer my lawn. I never have though. I did it the first year I bought my house and decided mowing twice a week to control it was something I didn't enjoy.
I talked to a guy last week who was complaining about having to pull moss out of his yard. My advise was to sell the lawn mover, pull all the grass out and cultivate the moss as you never need to mow that stuff! And, once the moss gets thick enough, even weeds have a hard time getting through it. Walk on it, drive the truck over it, it loves it, just makes it grow thicker.
I had to laugh at their blurb on the link; washing the car in your driveway sends (microns of) automotive fluids, etc into the storm drains. So, where the hell do they think rain runoff from all their freeways, with thousands of cars per day leaking "fluids" goes? And you're gonna help by using a fish-friendly wash kit? Your tax dollars at work here! So, while I DO understand it's a problem where large concentrations of cars are concerned, I fail to see how a few "fish friendly" car washes are going to-in any way whatsoever-mitigate the problem. Unless of course, it's simply to get people to think about the issue. In that case, it would be laudable. It would be a great study for some budding sociologist, maybe even a dissertation's worth of data, if it would relate to any change in peoples' attitudes toward simply "chucking" things-including gray water!
They're talking about using these for those charity car washes where a hundred or more cars in a day. It can make a difference. You gotta start somewhere Alex.
Alex, fyi. Any new road build or upgrade today has to be designed to account for every drop of water that falls on it. It has to be taken care of in some fashion with settling ponds and bioswales or some other method usually using natural means of removing contaminates from the water before it can be allowed to flow into a stream, river or the Salish Sea.
So you're saying it doesn't eventually find it's way back into the water system? I wouldn't expect something like that from government: intelligent thought!! Whodathunkit? Thanks, Kerry (and a pat for Kuma)
Nice site Chris. Great information. I may have misled Alex and others. There is a tremendous existing problem out there with runoff as the site you linked to shows. At least it is a known issue and some steps are being taken to deal with impervious surface runoff.
I especially like the signs to tell your neighbors that you are a "greeny". God, I need a week in Montana to sober up!
That's right Kerry, it's a huge issue that the average joe doesn't think about, but with 4,529 KNOWN outfalls, that alot of stuff running into the bay. The maps startling!
The catch ponds you see along the roads account for a lot of the water from roadways. True, not all goes there, especially from older roadways but the grounds actually filters, somewhat, the water that falls on it or flows onto it. Storm drains flow directly into the Sound, unchecked and they take all that soap and ferilizer that hits the streets with it. The fact that some people wash their cars on grass or don't use fertilizer just reduces the amount that gets there by just "that" much. Every little bit helps, in the long run. Puget Sound is quite a bit cleaner now than it was ten years ago. It is by no means "really clean" and won't ever be until we stop using it for log storage and a dumping ground for junk and chemicals and derlict ships that spill oil and grease into it. Things are looking better but we have a long way to go.
Here is where serious students of wildlife management come into play. What we're really talking about here is the "carrying capacity" of the environment. This is standard info for any hunter education course, but for the non-hunters among us, it refers to the number of creatures any given amount of land can support without either creature or habitat degradation. he same thing happens when you crowd too many humans into a finite space. China's "one kid" policy is a direct result of this situation. However, simply reducing the stuff you throw away won't mitigate the issue, just slow it down. What's going to be required to actually fix these situations is a means to eliminate the waste, ie: turn this stuff into something else. While I ridicule the true believers of the church of global warming for their insistence that we're the root cause of rising temperatures (which sure as hell haven't "risen" anywhere near where I live), I have no doubt that increasing ocean acidification and other environmental issues are not directly related to increased "feet on the ground"l. And, while I don't consider myself to be environmentally "enlightened", still, as a direct result of spending most of my life outdoors, I try to limit my impact on the land as much as possible. It's strange to realize how even the "little things" can have an impact. For example, how many of us think to cut up those plastic six-pack holders into smaller pieces so they'll degrade more quickly? I never thought of it until just now, but I've always cut them apart so a small critter couldn't get trapped in one. When you understand that you're actually a participant in your environment rather than just along for the ride, maybe it makes a difference!
Dammit!! See what you guys have done? Ruminating on what I just wrote over a cup of coffee, I realize I've been turned into an "activist"! That's a pejorative in my dictionary! Shit!! What's a grumpy old man gotta do??
I know what to do. Lets get rid of all the gasoline powered cars and quit using oil. Lets go back to just horses, and then you can all complain about the shitty smell of the horse shit when it gets wet. No more paved roads. Just dirt ones to throw the dust around. You can scream environmental protection until you are blue in the face. It will never change. People are to stuck on the easy way of life. And washing ones car on the lawn or on the street will always wash the shit down the drain.
I generally wash my car twice a year whether it needs it or not. Guess I'll cut that back to once a year in order to do my part to reduce run-off.
I believe this car wash kit pertains to just to you people in Washington. There you keep your cows out of the skinny water so they won't shit in it. Here in Montana they don't bother with fences. The cows can shit and piss anywhere they want. It don't seem to bother the people here that catch and eat fish. But I only catch and release them. I don't eat many fish.
