With Your Vehicles

Use a commercial car wash and maintain your vehicle to help keep our rivers and streams healthy.

Use a Commercial Car Wash

Washing your car on the street or in your driveway can be a dirty business. Oil, soap, brake pad and tire dust and other chemical residues wash straight into storm drains and flow, untreated, into nearby streams and rivers. Soaps also pose a significant threat to fish and the aquatic insects they eat because the chemicals in soaps coat fish gills and prevent them from getting sufficient oxygen.

The next time your car needs a shine take it to a commercial car wash. The water from a commercial car wash flows into the sanitary sewer system and is treated at a wastewater treatment plant before it enters local waterways. Order a Watershed Care Package to receive two $1 tokens for use in the Do-It-Yourself car wash and dog wash at The Wash Station in Wenatchee.

Keep Your Car in Working Order

Salmon and steelhead swim 468 miles from the Wenatchee River to the Pacific Ocean as smolts and repeat the journey again as adults. We can provide them with a cleaner migration route by reducing the effects of our travels. Oil and other substances that leak from our cars onto roads, driveways and parking lots are washed into waterways by rain and melting snow. 

Oil doesn’t dissolve in water so it sticks around for a long time and is toxic to people and wildlife. You can reduce pollution contributed by your car by regularly checking for leaks and fixing them promptly. 

Learn what you can do to help In Your Home, In Your Yard, and With Your Animals.