  |
By BOB NORBERG
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Carwashes, a time-honored way for school kids and nonprofit organizations to raise money, are being discouraged in Sebastopol because of the pollutants in the runoff.
“In Sebastopol the runoff goes to the Laguna de Santa Rosa or Atascadero Creek,” said city Planning Director Kenyon Webster. “It is not good to have soapy water going into them.”
Reducing the number of community carwashes would be an unfortunate occurrence, said Ty Folk, owner of Foster Freeze of Sebastopol, where groups hold many of the fundraisers.
“From a dad standpoint and the Sebastopol community, it would be a darn shame just because of all the budget restraints and everything else,” Folk said. “I do carwashes for high schools, allow carwashes for youth sports, I have had women’s shelters come in there, churches trying to raise money … it is a way to earn money for a program.”
Folk said a Sebastopol ballet and youth soccer group are still going to have the fundraisers at his business, where typically 50 to 70 cars may be washed in a day.
The surface water from his parking lot runs away from the street into the landscaping and onto a dirt road, but Folk said he knows that runoff from car washes held elsewhere in Sebastopol probably does end up in storm drains.
In the summer edition of its Community Newsletter, which is included in the city’s water bills, Sebastopol cited fundraising carwashes as one of the worst options for keeping cars clean.
That runoff can contain harsh detergents, brake dust, oil and other contaminants, according to the city.
Discharging that water into the sewer system is illegal, said Sue Kelly, Sebastopol director of engineering.
“State law says the only thing that is legal to put into a storm drain is rain,” Kelly said. “It is so strict we cannot even pump untreated water from our wells into a storm drain. Obviously, carwashes or people washing their cars in their driveways are illegal.”
Kelly said the Community Newsletter article was meant to be educational.
“We recycle our recyclables; we conserve water; we try to cut greenhouse gases, but there are all these other things people don’t even think about,” Kelly said.
She said the city staff is too small to enforce the law and that it’s more important to go after larger polluters, such as those causing erosion.
“It is sort of sad if we have to go out and bust high school students jumping up and down in the street and having fun at the carwash, but it is also sad if we think we can put whatever we want to down the storm drain,” Kelly said.
Subscribe by Email
Follow us on Twitter
must be the circus atmosphere that keeps me here
reminds me of the idiots we have here in office now it`s against the law to have a car if it doesn`t have tag or insurance in gainesville ga…good bye fixing old classics….
rain “can contain harsh detergents, brake dust, oil and other contaminants” also, so do we make rain illegal too?
America – home of the not free. We are so burdened with taxes, rules, laws and government meddling it’s appalling. Car washes are not hurting anyone or anything and anyone with an ounce of sense knows that.
The same folks who don’t want to allow our kids to raise money for their activities with car washes are most likely the same people who thought that a new stop light on 116 was necessary.
Now we have a big traffic problem, and fewer oportunities for kids to work toward their goals.
Good intentions minus forsight and critical thinking equals less freedom for individuals and more power to those who think they know best how we should all live, often while not applying those same rules to themselves.
jeeeze! you guys should put up a sign that says “welcome to california! if you can do it here, its more than likely illegal.”
Does no one with a pair live in the city i grew up in anymore?
disband the gestapo, get a new city council, join the real world.
“In Sebastopol the runoff goes to the Laguna de Santa Rosa or Atascadero Creek,” said city Planning Director Kenyon Webster. “It is not good to have soapy water going into them.”
Has City of Sebastopol, Kenyon Webster actually seen any soapy car wash water run into the Atascadero Creek or the Laguna?
Fire him, if he can’t deliver what he has said, “occurs with fund raising Sebastopol community groups. Fire him.” He is talking horse dung, and I was an expert raising nine Arabians in the late Sixties, early Seventies at Fredricks Rd.. My output was horse dung. But what a ride for several years, with Bruce Howard Training Stables in Wiikiup and the Grand Nationals with blue after blue ribbon beating Mario Ghillotti of Novato. He hired me, because “You won.” Fire Webster now!
So when is the soap free zone sign going up?
But first they should put up a common sense missing sign up.
Check out any parking space, in a parking lot or along the street, and what do you see? OIL. ANTIFREEZE.
When it rains, just where do you think THAT goes?
Yeah, biodegradable soap and water is the real hazard. Sounds more like City Hall is the hazard here.
As a former Sebastopol resident I want to scream and pull my hair out at this. Sebastopol has gone off the deep end with this. It has long been known for being the most anal city in Sonoma County. I once got a ticket in Sebastopol for going 27 in a 25. The cops are nit-pickers who couldn’t find real crime it bit them in the behind. To the city council-get your heads out of you behinds and do something to make Sebastopol work again, and if you can’t do that, then get out.
I suppose it is theoretically illegal to put anything foreign down a storm drain, but the whole thing strikes me as kind of mean spirited and trivial, and it sounds like the people at City Hall have way too much time on their hands. What’s also odd is that most of these drains serve acres and miles of asphalt roads and parking lots that not only leach their own petroleum based contaminants, but all that nasty oil and crud that you see in every parking space in town. Everything that Sebastopol has ever meant is quickly being ruined by the interpretation of a few as to how they think it should be.
Really people? Really?
You want to continue on as if almost 7 billion people have no impact on the plant? You want to take clean, safe drinking water and waste it by washing your cars? Really you think only a “little” soap into the Laguna is fine?
Really? Really you just want to go running along not worrying about the environment to leave to your kids and grandkids?
This is unreal – dogooders that will not let non profits raise money for their activities. What kind of lesson does that teach.
Sebastopol’s road are trashed, the traffic is awful, gangs are taking over the bike path and the Safeway parking lot, my kids cant wear red or blue. What does the City non-Council do. They debate smoking in private residences and whether soapy water hurts the environment.
Perhaps they should figure out that they work for us………..
Unreal……….
FWIW, Santa Rosa went on a similar campaign against car washes a few years back. The concern then was sediment washing into the creeks despoiling the gravel spawning beds used by salmon.
They outlawed fireworks a few years back. Now they’re outlawing car washes. I guess youth sports and other extra curricular activities can just pack it in.
twaddle, any street is filled with worn fragments of cars getting washed down the drains with each rain, and claiming that washing a car is illegal is the height of evil. That may sound a bit much, but this is the police criminalizing everything. The police want the power to control everyone, ostensibly for their own good, but that is not the legal system we have. The threat of arrest for interpretations of petty rules is creating a police state and I consider that EVIL.
You see it everywhere, the police charging someone with a crime that is at best a tragedy. This is the american taliban and needs to be stopped.
Give some dweebs power and they turn into monsters. Most plants do quite well with soapy run off and claiming otherwise is dishonest.
We are becoming more and more of a police state and if we don’t stop it we are going to be very sorry. Breaking petty rules is treated as a moral breakdown with these types of people. There is no common sense.
Back when there was a coffee shop in Copperfields, i parked across the street and was walking across when a cop at the downtraffic signal got out of his police car and screamed \we don’t allow jaywalking in this town\. he was livid and would have circled the block with his siren on except there were a lot of people watching. I stepped back and waited for him to drive away, but he took his time. I crossed the street. This is what these people are really like. If you give cops that kind of power, that’s what they do. There is no common sense here. There is no redeeming good in treating the public this way and it is a problem that gets harder to fix with time, as the rules become like new age god’s commandments. Like going to hell for not having a bycycle registration.
Just think, we are paying jerks to treat us this way, and they ain’t cheap, esp with all the hazard pay they get for citing skateboarders and jay walkers.
Sebastopol has become a city acting as if it were making sure those alzheimer old ladies don’t get upset by the speeding bycycles. There is something wrong with Sebastopol cops. mini gestapo. They have a new one that I have heard about, very high on the moral outrage he feels when dealing with the public. Cops gotta be screened for emotional balance. This doesn’t work.
Isn’t there any kind of soap that wouldn’t be a problem if a little bit went into the storm drain? It’s such a small amount anyway. This extreme environmentalism that prohibits the ordinary activities of the citizens is over the top. Whenever it rains, all sorts of dirt and pollution enters the storm drains. Maybe the cities will have to spend a fortune and put big filters into every storm drain to keep out all debris that might go in there. This is right up there with no smoking in an apartment building.
I was raised in Sebastopol. My parents went to Analy High School. I went to Analy High School. My son went to Analy High School. My grandmother was a teacher at Gravenstein. What a great town of free people. Everybody knew everybody. Robust agriculture, strong farm families… But now?! You transplants who have moved in over the years with you crape, hemp, nose rings, and Birkenstocks have come in with your meat hooks swinging and your Orwellian ideology tromping all over the freedoms of this small, innocent town.
Thank you very much!
Now let me wash my pickup!