If you are going to have a car wash fundraiser for your nonprofit group may I suggest that you understand the storm water discharge laws in our nation?The Federal Clean Water Act provides that; no wastewater discharges of any type including those soapy suds from washing cars is allowed to go into a storm drain.
Therefore it makes sense to block off a storm drain and get a wet and dry vacuum cleaner, which is specially made to suck up the water and pump it back out through a garden hose be used take all the dirty water and put it into a flower bed or one of the local lawns or into the shrubbery around the parking lot.
This solves the storm water discharge rules and therefore you will not be breaking the law.
Another thing you can do is to wash the cars on a slope where the water runs off into shrubbery or a dirt area instead of a storm drain.
There is no since in teaching the kids to pollute while you are trying to make money for the nonprofit group.
It is each and every one of our responsibilities to make sure the waterways in our nation are clean and this is something simple you can do and it will be a good lesson for the kids and also those people who get their car washed that you are doing the environmentally correct thing.
Please consider all this in 2006.