Bottom Line: The common products you use to maintain or remodel your home can be hazardous and harm wildlife in and around the Bay and Ocean and threaten our most valuable resource - water.
Maintaining Your Home Can Pollute the Bay. Unless we take steps to prevent it, motor oil, paint products, pet wastes, chemicals we use to clean our homes and pesticides used to beautify our gardens are washed day after day into neighborhood gutters and storm drains by rainwater and water from lawn watering. These pollutants flow through the storm drain system into local creeks and empty directly into the Bay or the Ocean. They present an ongoing hazard for the fish, birds, and other wildlife living in and around the Bay and Ocean and for many of us who use and enjoy our most valuable natural resource - water.
When Remodeling Your Home, Protect the Bay. When working with concrete, cement, or mortar, be sure to prevent materials from blowing or flowing to a driveway, street, or storm drain. Use cat litter or other absorbent material to clean up spills of toxic material from pavement and if the spill is less than 1 liquid gallon, double bag and dispose of the used absorbent material in the garbage. If more, contact the County Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Program for advice.
Install wood decking, bricks or interlocking stones instead of impervious cement walkways and install gravel trenches along driveways or patios to collect water and allow it to filter into the ground.
Take Action:
- Find out where to recycle your used motor oil, antifreeze, latex paint and other HHW.
- Find a free Household Hazardous Waste collection event near you.
- View a calendar of household hazardous waste pick-up dates here .
Find out more about proper disposal of toxic products call: The San Mateo County Household Hazardous Waste Hotline at (650) 363-4718.
All above information gathered from the San Mateo County Wide Water Pollution Prevention website: http://flowstobay.org.
