Fleet Washing on Ozone Action Days and Drought Restrictions

Two kinds of alerts land in a Metro Atlanta fleet manager's inbox between May and October. The first is an air quality alert: a Code Orange or Code Red ozone day, when the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) forecasts unhealthy ground-level ozone and asks everyone to cut emissions. The second is a drought declaration, when the state or your local water provider tightens outdoor water use. Both raise the same question from dispatch: can we still wash the fleet this week?

The short answer is that ozone alerts do not restrict washing at all, and Georgia's drought rules have historically treated commercial vehicle washing differently from the backyard car wash. But the details matter, the rules change with the drought level, and your water provider can be stricter than the state. This post lays out what is actually allowed, what is not, and how to run a wash program that stays inside the lines without pausing every time the forecast changes.

What an Ozone Action Day Actually Restricts

Nothing, legally, for a private business. Ozone alerts in Georgia are forecasts and voluntary action requests. EPD forecasts ozone daily through the smog season, and when the forecast reaches Code Orange (unhealthy for sensitive groups) or Code Red (unhealthy for everyone), the state and the regional commute programs ask people to drive less, refuel in the evening, avoid idling, and put off gas-powered lawn equipment. There is no rule that says a fleet cannot be washed on an ozone day.

Washing does have an emissions footprint, though, and being a good actor is cheap. The two sources are engines idling during the wash, and the gas or diesel engine and burner on the pressure washer itself. A hot-water unit runs a diesel or kerosene burner for heat and a small engine for the pump. Neither is large, but a crew running two units for eight hours on a Code Red afternoon is not nothing.

Practical steps: shut trucks off while they are washed rather than idling them through the queue, start early so the burner hours fall before the afternoon ozone peak (ozone builds through the day and is usually highest from mid-afternoon to early evening), and refuel the wash equipment in the morning or after dark. Those three habits cover everything the ozone program is actually asking for.

How Georgia Drought Rules Treat Vehicle Washing

Georgia's outdoor water use rules come from the Water Stewardship Act of 2010 and the EPD drought management rules that sit under it. The everyday, non-drought rule limits landscape irrigation to the hours between 4 pm and 10 am. That rule is about irrigation. Washing a truck is not irrigation, and the daily hours restriction is not written for it.

The drought rules add response levels as conditions worsen. At the lowest level the state runs public education. At the higher levels the rules limit outdoor water use to specific days and prohibit a list of uses. That list has generally targeted things like washing hard surfaces such as driveways and sidewalks, ornamental fountains, and non-commercial washing of vehicles, including charity car washes. Commercial vehicle washing has been distinguished from those categories in the state's rules.

Do not treat that as a blank check. The wording of the exemptions can change when the rules are revised, a declared drought level can come with added conditions, and the state rules set a floor that local governments can build on. The correct move when a level is declared is to read the current EPD notice and call your water provider, not to rely on a summary written in a different year, including this one.

Your Local Provider Can Be Stricter

Metro Atlanta water comes from a patchwork of providers: the City of Atlanta's watershed department, Cobb County Water System, DeKalb County, Gwinnett County, the Douglasville-Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority, and a dozen smaller cities. Each can adopt conservation ordinances stricter than the state's, and many of them have.

What that means in practice is that the rule that applies to your yard in Kennesaw might not be the rule that applies to your yard in Decatur. Confirm with each provider what an elevated drought level means for commercial vehicle washing on their system, and keep the answer in writing. If a contractor is doing the washing, ask what they have confirmed too.

Water source matters as well. Rules written around potable water from the meter do not necessarily read the same for water brought in by tanker or reclaimed and reused on site. Again, ask rather than assume.

Low-Flow Equipment Changes the Math

The picture regulators have in mind when they think of vehicle washing is a garden hose running at 8 to 12 gallons per minute into the street. A commercial pressure washer flows 4 to 8 gallons per minute, and because the water is hot and pressurized it removes dirt in a fraction of the time. A tractor-trailer that takes 40 minutes and 300 to 400 gallons with a hose takes 25 to 35 minutes and 100 to 200 gallons with a hot-water unit and a two-step chemical process.

Reclaim equipment cuts fresh-water use further. A wash mat or berm with vacuum recovery collects the water, a filtration stage removes solids and oil, and the water goes back into the tank for the pre-rinse on the next unit. A fleet of 20 tractor-trailers that would use 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of potable water through a hose can be washed on a few hundred gallons of make-up water with reclaim. That is the kind of number that changes a conversation with a water provider during a drought.

Contain the water anyway. Even outside a drought, wash water is process wastewater under stormwater rules and does not belong in a storm drain. Reclaim solves the conservation problem and the discharge problem in the same step.

Scheduling Around Alerts

Build the wash calendar so a Code Red day or a drought announcement does not derail it. Early starts, 6 to 10 am, put the equipment hours before the ozone peak and before the afternoon heat that bakes soap onto panels. Night and weekend windows do the same and keep trucks in service during the day; the case for night and weekend fleet washing gets stronger in summer, not weaker. A recurring fleet washing route with fixed early windows takes the decision out of the daily forecast.

During a declared drought, shift to reclaim, log the gallons used per unit, and prioritize the wash items that have a safety or compliance reason: lamps, reflectors, mirrors, DOT numbers, and the undercarriage ahead of an inspection. A log of water use per wash is also the document you want in hand if a provider asks what you are doing.

Do not stop washing. Skipping a month in August because of an alert leaves road film baked on in 95 degree heat, which means more chemical, more water and more time to remove it in September. Steady, efficient washing uses less water over a season than catch-up washing does.

Compliant Washing Every Week of the Summer

PBD Pressure Washing runs low-flow hot-water equipment and reclaim across Metro Atlanta, and we schedule early, at night and on weekends so ozone days and afternoon heat do not move your wash date. We track the drought level and check with the water provider before we change how we work in a yard, and we will tell you what we confirmed. Paul Dunbar ran equipment for 25 years by doing things properly the first time, and that is how we approach the rules as much as the wash.

If you want a summer wash program that stays compliant without stopping every time the forecast changes, request a quote or call (404) 933-8559. We will look at your yards, your providers and your routes and build a schedule around them.

FLEET WASHING ON OZONE ACTION DAYS AND DROUGHT RESTRICTIONS