MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - The popular image that tends to come to mind when people think of washing their vehicle seems to be of the car in the driveway with suds and water running down towards the road. And that presents a problem.

Consider the reason behind washing a car; its dirty. Salt, grease, oil, manure, roadkill juices, bugs on the windshield. Cars get dirty. Driveways are usually designed so that water will run down them an into the street and, from there, the storm drains. Storm drains themselves lead either to water treatment facilities or straight to an open water sources like a river or lake.

So washing a car in a driveway could lead to not only the mess from off the car but also the soap and other cleaning fluids to wash into the public water supply. Even if the water is routed to a treatment facility, the runoff still presents an unnecessary risk of the equipment not straining out some of the unique chemicals and contaminants.

Washing a vehicle on the lawn greatly decreases this risk. The runoff will be absorbed by the soil instead of pouring into the drains. A lawn can handle a single car's worth of runoff a lot easier than a lake or treatment facility can handle the runoff of an entire neighborhood.

In short, Meridian Township asks that residents could please wash their vehicles on the lawn, not the driveway.