As usual, this really makes no sense because the cities are writing ordinances to fine the contractors but also making themselves exempt.
I asked a specific question to the effect of if a contractor was bidding a contract for cleaning and the city decided to do it themself, would the police, epa or tceq go and give them a ticket? They said no because the city is exempt.
When we were driving we got to see a large piece of heavy equipment being washed at the city facility with the wash water going off-site and clearly into the storm water drain. The city can do this all they want but they are out giving contractors fines for less, mostly wash water.
I asked another specific question to the effect of a restaurant owner wanting their street gutters cleaned of the mold, mildew and algae but the contractor had blocked the storm water drains AND was recovering the water and pumping it back onto the property and/or re-using it in a closed-loop-system but when a police officer goes by and sees this, without a clue, without stopping to see what is going on and using some common sense and seeing with his own eyes that not only is nothing going down the storm water drain but the storm water drain is blocked, the ignorant officer just writes a ticket and says to tell it to the judge. They said that you would get a ticket. Even after all I just said, the main enforcement officer said that we would get a ticket and would have to go talk to the judge. Wow!
This just goes to show that they are just out to write tickets, not develop a relationship with contractors, not see that cleaning can be done responsibly, not make sure that contractors are doing the right thing.......just going to write tickets. I wonder what their "unofficial quota" is for each month? I wonder if they get bonuses for exceeding their "unofficial quota" each month?
It is really a huge problem in Houston and with representatives from 8 different cities, it is very possible for those 8 different cities to adopt the "Houston" program, it would be easy, not take months or years of research and time wasted, just copy what Houston is doing and start writing tickets. Once those 8 cities are doing the "Houston" program, a lot more cities will follow and more than likely it will be larger cities close to you.
With the clean water act they don't want grass clippings in the storm water drains. If the cities were really smart they would have crews driving around and fine not just contractors but homeowners of blowing the leaves and grass out into the streets after mowing the grass. They would not have to catch them in the act, just see the grass out in the street and see what house was just mowed and start writing tickets. This would be 10X or 100X more tickets than what they would write pressure washing contractors so it makes you wonder, why are they targeting pressure washing contractors????????????? Commercial properties are mowed weekly or bi-weekly and homes the same schedule so many, many more opportunities for them to write tickets but they are not doing so as far as I know. I wonder why?????
What about painting contractors that wash their brushes and buckets out and it runs down the driveway out into the street or they leave puddles in the parking lot and it runs off the property, I wonder why they are not targeting the painting contractors?????????
There are other fields of work where they would get fines also but did not really get mentioned too much. They did have pictures of some oil change places where they were dumping the used oil into the drains and those people not only got fined but got arrested and are now Environmental Criminals.
I agree, a lot more oil from leaky cars gets into the stormwater system with each rain from what is on the streets but when we wash parking lots the right way, we eliminate the chances of more oil that gets added to the stormwater system so we are doing the environment a favor and helping it but Houston does not see it that way, they are just looking to write tickets.
