Common Sense. Where are you?

Here is typical runoff from a parking lot.


I don't know about you guys, but I've never seen this concentration of oil sheen coming off a plaza or even a regularly cleaned drive thru....ever.

Yet we are supposed to believe that we are a huge source of water pollution.

Houston put powerwashers on the "Major Offenders" list thanks to our past "leadership" who went around selling that idea to municipalities, while pretending to be representing our best interests.

So meanwhile thousands of us ran out and bought thousands of dollars of fossil fuel burning equipment to deal with the problem. Many of us did it out of guilt, so as not to "hurt the children".

Most that equipment sits idle. Many of us have the common sense to use our equipment to deal with truly hazardous situations like spills and the like. Others who were bamboozled into thinking that the market would support such lunacy already went out of business and sold their equipment on craigslist.

Yet still we are allowing one of our own orgs to dictate that if we use hot water we must pick it up.

It's insanity.

Imagine the impact that a simple oil sock would have had at this parking lot.

Nothing down the dr*in but rain. Really?

Tony, you hit the nail on the head. Every city official and epa agent needs to see two things, an oil sheen carried by rain into the storm drains from a surface not regularly cleaned, and a bucket of wastewater after an oil absorbant sock is lifted out of it. Jerry has a great demo of black oily water turning crystal clear in 2 seconds using a simple oil sock. I think if they saw these two things they'd change the laws REQUIRING regular cleaning and simple BMPs using just silt filters and oil socks. Does someone have this one-two punch combined in a youtube video that we can send to our officials?

Isn't that the truth?

Option A - Plaza gets cleaned with no reclaim equipment but contractor uses oil sock takes care of most pollution, and future rainstorm doesn't pollute waterways nearly as much, if not at all.

Option B - Plaza doesn't get cleaned at all and oil drains into stream from rain storm, but we are the polluters?

We should be considered the solution to keeping our water cleaner without spending a fortune in buying equipment and hiring extra labor. Don't get me wrong like Tony said there is a time and a place for reclaim equipment but I never did understand reclaim for every situation.

**and yes we have environmental pressure washing equipment**