Had an account for a local Chick Fil A to clean weekly the parking lots and Drive Thru. After servicing for about a month I was called one morning by the operator of the Chick Fil A and was told he received a call from a Sergeant Mike Walsh from the "Major Crimes Division" and was investigating a complaint of waster water being discharged into the storm water drain by a pressure washing company. Walsh set up an appointment to meet with the manager that afternoon at 1pm, (this was April of this year), and told the operator to not contact me. I showed up at 1pm for the as I wanted to find out was going on.
After meeting with the operator for about a ½ hour in the back room, the Detective came out to the seating area and we sat down to discuss the situation. He pulled out some pictures of cleaning the parking lot and explained that a complaint had been filed by a competitor of mine and identified the person as Doug Baxley, from Goldstone Exterior. The Detective told me that this guy doesn’t actually do pressure washing but sells equipment. I later found out this not to be true, and that Goldstone does do power washing.
After discussing, and the detective explaining to me that the law in the City of Houston is that “nothing can go down the drain except for rain”, and explaining to me that the storm sewers that I discharged my waste water into feeds directly into Lake Houston and that that is where all of Houston get’s it’s drinking water. and me admitting that it was me in the pictures, the detective asked me to come down to his office the following Monday to receive two citations for “MS4 A discharge not entirely composed of storm water.”
The following Monday my wife and I went to the Detective’s office to receive the citations. Both tickets carried a fine of $425.00 each. While receiving the tickets, Sergeant Walsh showed me two emails that came across his computer while we were sitting there. They were from the same Doug Baxley of Goldstone Exteriors and the emails contained pictures of two different Taco Bell/KFC restaurants and power washers allowing waste water being discharged to the storm drains over the weekend. Apparently this Detective get’s about 1 to 2 of these emails per day from this guy. Later as we were preparing to leave, the detective received a phone call on his cell phone from Doug Baxley reporting a power washing company in progress of cleaning a parking lot and allowing storm water to go down the drain. Detective Walsh left immediately to go “apprehend” the alleged suspects.
I was not aware of the strict laws or “best management guidelines” that City had enacted and that is my fault. But, had this Baxley guy come up to me while I was working and explained that I was in violation of the law, I would have shut it down right then and there and found out what I needed to do to be complaint. Instead he chose to secretly sit in his car and take pictures of me on TWO different weekends and then turn me in.
The City of Houston’s law is basically this. You can not allow any waster water to go down a storm drain. It must be collected and disposed at an “approved” waste site (whether you use chemicals or plain water) of which there are only about 3 “approved sites” in the city, all of which are about an hour from me. But, before you can do this, you must take your equipment to the City of Houston Health Department, demonstrate to them that the equipment works properly, pay a $590.00 fee and have a permit issued to haul waste water within the City of Houston. You then must fill out a manifest for every job, detailing how many gallons of waste water was collected form the site, have the owner of the business sign it, as well as the “approved dump site” and then file that manifest with the City of Houston Public Health Department every month along with a $2.50 filing fee.
“Nothing down the Drain, but Rain” means “Nothing down the Drain, but Rain” so the use of filter socks, filtration pads, etc are not compliant. 100% of ALL waste water must be contained.
Funny thing is, the only chemical I used on the parking Lot is the EATOILS BT200, which is Certified GREEN. We sell this same BT200 to many municipalities. They use it to keep there storm AND sanitary sewers clean. It is also used to clean lakes and reservoirs. It was even used in some areas of the Gulf Oil Spill and more extensively used for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Of course, this fell on deaf ears with the City.
Due to these strict law’s, and knowing that there is someone, a competitor running around snapping pictures and turning people in, I just decided to get out of the commercial business and now concentrate only on job’s that do not require recovery/reclaim.
By the way, I went to court, and Sargeant Walsh dropped one charge and lowered the fine to $200.00 on the other.