Along with wild salmon and steelhead trout, the Pacific Northwest soon may have another endangered species – the driveway carwash. Washing your car or boat in the driveway or street is a residential ritual as American as backyard barbecues. But the state of Washington is telling its local governments they must prohibit home car washing unless residents divert the wash water away from storm drains, where they say it causes water pollution.

“I understand this is something people have done for a long time,” says Bill Moore, water quality specialist with the Washington state Department of Ecology, which is requiring the ban. “It’s not something we should be doing any longer.”

Some residents defiant

He says the soapy runoff is toxic to salmon and other fish and that small metal particles that wash off cars, such as brake dust, is harmful, too.

Unlike public sanitary sewer systems that clean wastes from water, storm drain systems in most communities empty straight into streams and eventually rivers and oceans.

“Clearly you cannot dump your bucket of wash water, or as you are hosing down your car, you’re not supposed to allow that into a storm drain,” says Kim Schmanke, spokeswoman for the department.

Mark Muhlhauser, 41, who washes his Toyota Highlander nearly every weekend outside his Vancouver, Wash., home, has a simple message for regulators: Come get him.

“I will wash it this weekend,” he said defiantly. “It’s just totally crazy. I don’t think anybody’s going to follow it. Everybody I’ve talked to, they’re still planning on washing their cars.” He gets sympathy from Brian Carlson, public works director for Vancouver, a city of 160,000 people just across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. He says the city is being ordered by state Ecology Department officials to pass an ordinance banning carwash runoff by next year, but that neither he nor other city officials intend to do so.

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-09-28-car-wash_N.htm