P2 Weekly Tip: Don't Waste Water Washing Your Car!

When you wash your car at home dirt, oil, and grease gets washed away with the detergent. This polluted water then flows from the street and into nearby storm drains. Car washing detergents are rich in pollutants, such as nutrients, metals and hydrocarbons that need to be treated at our wastewater treatment facilities.

Did you know that most commercial car washes are required to treat their wash water and often recycle their water for multiple washes? Ultimately saving water!

Next time your car needs a wash; think about taking it to a commercial car wash instead of washing pollutants down the drain. This will help conserve water, wastewater run-off, and divert the harmful effects untreated wastewater has on the environment.

P2 Weekly Tip: Think Before You Flush!

Do you flush sanitary or baby wipes down the toilet?

Flushing wipes can cause major problems in the City’s sewer system. The extra wastes (such as sanitary wipes, household cleaning wipes, baby wipes, etc.) that are labeled “flushable" clog the sewer system, contributing to costly cleanups and even flooding. Please, ONLY flush toilet paper and throw wipes and similar items in the trash.

Visit: http://pollutionprevention.sfwater.org/ for more toilet safe information!

Out With the Old

Undoing what’s been done might seem like a funny way to approach stormwater management – let’s face it, most of us think about progress in terms of what we build, not what we dismantle. But mitigating urbanization’s impacts on stormwater runoff requires a different type of strategy – it requires Low Impact Design.


Low Impact Design (or LID for you hipsters) is a suite of technologies that replace impervious surfaces like paved streets and driveways with porous ones, like rainwater gardens, green roofs and swales (swales are low tracts of land used as open drain systems).

Swale

When these technologies are applied to urban designs such as street medians, parks and schools, rainwater penetrates the earth, reinvigorating groundwater tables and streams.

Mission Bay Swale installation, Channel Pump Station, San Francisco

And there’s more (wait for it…) As rainwater percolates through layers of soil, street pollutants like car oil, animal waste and heavy metals are filtered out – a natural, ancient and very efficient process.

So when you next watch as oily rainwater pours from your driveway into a gutter, and you think to yourself, “there must be a better way…”

You’re right. There is.

For more information on the SFPUC’s LID and stormwater management programs, please visit: http://stormwater.sfwater.org/.