What happens when a city passes a regulation without actually putting any thought into it?
You get Santa Maria’s recently minted rules surrounding mobile commercial car washers—built to comply with an apparent environmental ask from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board without actually caring about how it would impact the industry it’s meant to regulate or how industry members will comply with it.
Code Enforcement Supervisor Joy Castaing was very clear at the beginning of an April workshop about the ordinance: She was there to answer questions about compliance, not to talk about changing the new rules. Normally, those little workshops are held before City Council passes anything so the city can get input on feasibility.
But not this time!
And when it came to answering questions from business owners about how exactly they were supposed to comply with directives, city staff didn’t have answers.
Many business owners let the city know they were very concerned about the fact that mobile car washers are now required to contain 95 percent of the water used while operating. And they have to turn records in to the city of how much water they use and how much they dispose of.
During the workshop, one business owner, who called herself “RC,” commented that collecting 95 percent of the water she uses seems impossible.
“When water hits the pavement, it evaporates within a couple of minutes,” she said. Roberto Aguilar piggybacked on her comments adding that when water hits a hot car, it evaporates almost immediately. As anyone who’s ever washed a car should know.
So, he asked, what do they do when the records don’t match up?
“If it evaporates, you’re not going to count that as part of the [95 percent],” Castaing told them.
Umm, OK. So the 95 percent requirement is loosey-goosey?
Code Enforcement Officer Yvette Fuentes suggested that washers collect their used water into a tank and drop its contents off at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, where people get charged by how big the tank is—not the amount of water that gets emptied. Sounds fair. Not.
RC questioned what washers should do on the weekends, their busiest time, when the treatment plant is closed. The answer: Shrug.
“We’re not saying that that’s the only disposal location you have. There’s other alternatives that you’re more than welcome to look into,” Fuentes said.
OK. Cool! So glad we had this talk.
RC had an answer for that, too, because she actually did her research—unlike the city. She’d looked into other disposal options, and there aren’t any.
Utilities Department Regulatory Compliance Specialist Antonio Bravo recommended they could dispose of this water at home into their own sewer systems.
You know, hook that water tank hose up and pump it straight down the kitchen sink! Sounds great. I know the city’s had sewer issues before because Mayor Alice Patino brought it up during a different meeting about different small businesses operating in the city—cottage kitchens out of people’s homes—and she was pissed about it!
But dumping all the oil, road grime, and other crap that comes off a car during a wash into the city’s sewer system is cool? I don’t get it.
The Canary is dazed and confused. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 6-13, 2021.