In a Lather : San Diego Ban on Fund-Raising Carwashes Draws Sudsy Protest

It might be the first time that soaping down a supercherry 1953 Ford pickup truck rated as an act of political rebellion.

But, hey, these are desperate times--at least for the high school pep clubs, church groups and other nonprofit and charitable organizations that depend on street-corner carwashes to raise money.

And desperate times, well, they’re enough to make you take to the streets, with chamois and garden hose in hand.

Which explains why there were 100 or so high school students gleefully committing a soapy kind of protest, San Diego-style, on Friday, the largest mass act of civil disobedience this politically low-key city has seen in recent years.

The target of the youthful ire--egged on by several politicians and a controversial radio talk-show host--is a rule of the city of San Diego that, in the name of the Federal Clean Water Act and the city’s Stormwater Management and Discharge Ordinance, seeks to curtail fund-raising carwashes.

“It’s a silly rule,” said Todd Gloria, 17, student body president at Madison High School, as he soaped and scrubbed. “It’s really tied our hands.”

Why, you ask, would anyone want to put a crimp in carwashes that pay for band uniforms, cheerleader outings, graduation trips to Disneyland and other extracurricular items?

The answer is that the soap and dirt, oil, grease, brake-lining residue and other gooey stuff get washed into storm drains and end up in San Diego Bay, Mission Bay, Penasquitos Lagoon and the ocean, all of which have pollution problems.

Commercial carwashes have traps to filter pollutants. Car washing by individuals at home is seen as too difficult to regulate. But car washing by teen-agers at the corner of the neighborhood gas station or church parking lot is ripe for regulation.

So a letter went out to the superintendent of San Diego schools from a city employee with the unwieldy title of “national pollution discharge elimination system program administrator.”

The reaction was swift and predictable. The carwash rule suddenly became everyone’s favorite example of regulatory excess.

“This rule is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Councilman Scott Harvey, who would like to be Assemblyman Scott Harvey. “Students armed with sponges and buckets are not the enemy of Mission Bay. It’s the bureaucrats with pencils and calculators behind desks at City Hall who have failed to deliver a sewer system that consistently works.”

Harvey was the first, but not the last, politician to decry the rule. Soon to follow were a congressman, a deputy city attorney (who has run once for office and may run again), a city council candidate and two county supervisors. The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial page called the rule “overzealous” and “absurd.”

Not that the rule doesn’t have some friends.

“With carwashes, what the students need to learn is that they have to be thinking ‘environment’ from Day 1,” said Roy Latas, leader of the San Diego County chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. “The entrepreneurial progress they’re making has to be ecologically sound.”

Harvey has asked the city attorney to rule that student carwashes are “non-commercial” and thus exempt. He joined KSDO-radio talk-show host Roger Hedgecock in hosting the protest carwash where the Madison High cheerleaders washed several hundred cars to earn money for a trip to a cheerleading convention in Orlando, Fla. Some of the proceeds will go to a Christian school and some to a group that protects Mission Bay.

Hundreds of San Diegans, normally a law-abiding bunch, drove to the radio station to get their cars washed and to aid and abet the protest.

There were no arrests.

And there are no plans for arrests at renegade carwashes, said Jonathan Levy, the City Hall official charged with enforcing the city’s storm-drain ordinances.

“We don’t have enough [enforcement] people to chase around after carwashes,” said Levy, deputy director of the city’s general services department. “There are lots more serious violations going on, like people putting oil and other toxic materials in the drains. We’ve got two enforcement people for a city of 360 square miles and 1.3 million people.”

As with many political controversies, the furor has run ahead of the facts by a length or two. For one thing, the rule about not sending soapy water down storm drains is not new and not unique to San Diego, although San Diego may be the only city so bold as to send out a cautionary letter to the local school superintendent.

Levy said the letter that started the contretemps was more in the nature of an educational device seeking voluntary compliance than a warning of an impending crackdown. As the letter noted, fund-raising carwashes are fine if precautions are taken to keep the soapy water from going down the storm drains.

A car can be washed on grass (a football field, for example) so the water will soak into the ground. Or the water could be collected with a wet-vacuum and then released on grass or put somewhere to evaporate, such as a large empty parking lot on a hot day.

At the Madison High carwash, the mood was defiant.

“A law like that shouldn’t be on the books,” said Phil Kezar, a retired Navy man, as his lovingly restored ’53 Ford pickup was being washed.

Meanwhile, Bob Cain, whose letter started it all, remained philosophical. After 35 years as a city employee, he isn’t ruffled when politicking gets mixed up with policy-making.

“I do think, though, we’re getting a bum rap on this one,” he said.