A Conservation Call to Action

Self-serve operator Bill Sartor urges industry toward certification

“Operators need to volunteer themselves to become the poster child of water conservation and put into play a certification program,” urges Sartor. “The problem is nobody will do it [until they need it].

“That’s just speaking from experience,” he continues. “The reason I get the phone calls is I know what I’m doing; I know how to speak regulator speak; and I’m not in the middle of a problem. These guys are fighting for their lives. I know because I was doing it.”

Sartor is proud that most of the standards originally established by San Antonio’s carwash certification program have become part of city code. When new operators start their businesses, they automatically meet the basic operational criteria of the program, whether they become officially certified or not.

“Once you put a certification program for carwashes into play, it’s nothing but best management practices,” he says. “There is nothing in that certification program that is onerous for any operator. It is best management practices for conveyors, in-bay automatics and self-serves. It’s stuff that the operator ought to be doing anyway.”

What had been a potentially contentious relationship with San Antonio city officials in 1996 has become a model for government workmanship.

SAWS and leading carwash operators now have a close working relationship and together have crafted a new set of standards to increase the meaning and efficiency of the carwash certification program.

“It helps when the carwash industry approaches us,” comments Eddie Wilcut, manager of indoor programs for SAWS. “They have been proponents of changing the program, making it a little more effective and soliciting more involvement.”

“It doesn’t put you out of business to do the right thing,” adds Karen Guz, SAWS conservation department director. “We find that over and over again with other industries. They can do the right thing, and it lowers their overhead costs. Water is not an insignificant part of what it costs to run a carwash operation. It’s in their best interest to look into this anyway.”

There are 346 carwashes that are SAWS customers, but in 2007 just 19 percent were active participants in the water-saving certification program. However, SAWS officials believe that changes that went into effect in January will push the number of certified carwashes toward 90 percent.

“As we’ve changed standards, we’ve had people who haven’t stayed up with it,” says Wilcut. That prompted action to make the program more meaningful to operators. Topping the list of new changes is a 10 percent sewer credit for participating carwashes. If the program achieves 100 percent enrollment, that would be worth $78,000 to operators or approximately $225 per location.

In addition, greater emphasis has been placed on the importance of certification in the event of future drought conditions. “It is now true that in the later stages of drought, a carwash is not going to be able to have as many hours of operation if it is not a certified carwash,” notes Guz.

Throw into the mix an annual supply of spray nozzles and protectors supplied by SAWS, and the incentive to rejoin the program or become certified for the first time is taking shape.

There is certainly some irony in that the drop off in participation can be attributed to some degree to the program’s success. By raising standards, better business practices have become the norm. Water reclamation is simply a part of doing business in San Antonio, with full-service washes required to claim at least 50 percent of their consumption. In addition, selfserve washes must recapture the brine from their spot-free rinse and use that in the soap phase, according to Wilcut.

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