9 INTO TOWN

CHAPTER 9 INTO TOWN When we got home, we dropped off our things and our cat. Before we left on our hunt for a car wash, I quickly added some notes to my science journal. OBSERVATION: Soap is coming from the storm

drain. HYPOTHESIS: The pollution is coming from a car wash! Dad buckled in and started the car. He turned to Mom. "Where do you think I should drive first?" I piped up from the backseat. "Shouldn't we start at Sam's Car Wash in town?" I mean, that seemed like a pretty obvious answer to me. "Ah," my mom replied. "What would happen if the town car wash dumped soap into the storm drains all day long?" Oh, I thought. "We would've had this problem from the beginning," I said. "There wouldn't be any merhorses in our stream!" "Did you say... merhorses?" my dad asked. "I meant to say mayflies," I said quickly. "There

wouldn't be any mayflies." "Correct," said Mom. "Which is why car washes like the one in town have special drains. All their soapy water travels through special pipes to a water treatment plant. There they remove the soap and grease from the water to keep our streams safer." "So what are we looking for then? A person washing a car at their house?" I sighed. "That will be impossible to find!" "No, something bigger than that. Although you're right, if you wash a car with a lot of soap at home, that soapy water goes down the road into a storm drain and into their local stream or ocean. But with all the damage to that part of the stream, I'm guessing we're looking for a group of kids running a car wash." At first I was kind of mad at the kids. They were killing the mayfly babies and hurting the merhorses! Who would do that? But then I realized I hadn't known that a car wash in town could hurt our stream, either. It's not like you can even see the stream from anywhere in town. Whoever these kids were, they probably had

no idea what they were doing to our stream. My dad drove up and down the streets in town. We looked everywhere. Just when we were about to give up, I saw a flash of neon. A sign that said... CAR WASH!