Decatur writes its own stormwater rule, and DeKalb County's chapter stops at the city line
Thrare Contracting washes exterior surfaces for homeowners, HOA and condominium boards, apartment owners, restaurant and retail operators, office and medical landlords, and institutional facility staff at addresses inside the City of Decatur: the storefront and patio frontage around the Decatur Square and along East and West Ponce de Leon Avenue, the bungalow and Tudor housing stock in Oakhurst, Winnona Park and Glennwood Estates, the mid rise apartment and condominium buildings built along the MARTA line, and the office, medical and institutional property near Commerce Drive and the Emory and Agnes Scott edges of the city. Decatur is a service area rather than a location. Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, works from the Atlanta address printed at the foot of this page, and Rare Earth Ltd has operated since January 19, 2020.
Every section below names the instrument first, because exterior cleaning in Decatur is a water disposal problem before it is a cleaning problem. A wand, a surface cleaner and a hot water machine are commodities that any contractor can rent. Knowing which government's ordinance reaches the parcel, what that ordinance calls the liquid running off the wall, and what happens on the sidewalk that liquid crosses, is the part a Decatur property owner cannot buy from a price sheet.
A property inside the Decatur city limits is governed by the City of Decatur's own illicit discharge rule, and Sec. 9.6.3.B of the City of Decatur Code of Ordinances states its reach in one line: "The provisions of this Section shall apply throughout the corporate limits of the City, Georgia." That section sits in Part IV of the Decatur Code, the Unified Development Ordinance, at Article 9, Environmental Protection.
DeKalb County's stormwater chapter does not reach a Decatur address on the County's own terms. DeKalb County Code Sec. 22.5-11(a) states that "The provisions of this chapter shall apply throughout unincorporated DeKalb County," and preserves county authority inside a city only "as are set forth in the interjurisdictional agreements with the governing bodies of such cities." DeKalb County Sec. 22.5-4(c)(8) then defines the county municipal separate storm sewer system to exclude any conveyance "located within the boundaries of a city located within the county." Decatur is an incorporated city, so the county's storm sewer definition stops at the Decatur line by its own text. Thrare Contracting read no interjurisdictional agreement between DeKalb County and the City of Decatur and makes no claim about whether one exists or what it would cover.
One split survives that boundary and it catches contractors regularly. The storm sewer in Decatur is the City's, and the sanitary sewer is the County's. Decatur Sec. 9.6.4.B.3 says so directly, requiring that an improper connection "must be disconnected and redirected, if necessary, to an approved onsite wastewater management system or the sanitary sewer system upon approval of the DeKalb County Water and Sewer Department." A crew that plans to send recovered wash water to a sanitary connection in Decatur is dealing with two governments on one job, and a vendor procedure written against DeKalb County alone leaves the discharge side of the work uncovered.
The City of Decatur Code names wash water inside its own definition of an illegal connection, in Article 12 of the Unified Development Ordinance. An illegal connection includes "Any pipe, open channel, drain or conveyance, whether on the surface or subsurface, which allows an illicit discharge to enter the storm drain system including, but not limited to, any conveyances which allow any non-stormwater discharge including sewage, process wastewater, and wash water to enter the storm drain system, regardless of whether such pipe, open channel, drain or conveyance has been previously allowed, permitted, or approved by an authorized enforcement agency". Sewage and wash water sit in the same clause of the same sentence.
Article 12 also settles the argument a pressure washing contractor most often tries to have on a loading dock. The Decatur definition of a pollutant lists, among others, "petroleum hydrocarbons; automotive fluids; cooking grease; detergents (biodegradable or otherwise); degreasers; cleaning chemicals". The parenthetical is the operative part: a detergent is a pollutant under the Decatur Code whether or not the container says biodegradable. A soap sold as plant based, green, or landscape safe is still a detergent, and a detergent is still a pollutant.
Sec. 9.6.4.A then prohibits the discharge outright: "No person shall throw, drain, or otherwise discharge, cause, or allow others under its control to throw, drain, or otherwise discharge into the municipal separate storm sewer system any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants, other than stormwater." Two phrases in that sentence carry weight for a Decatur buyer. "No person" reaches the crew holding the wand. "Cause, or allow others under its control" reaches the owner or manager who hired the crew, which is why the containment method belongs in the written scope rather than in a verbal assurance on the day.
The Decatur ordinance exempts exactly one kind of washing, and reading the clause closely is the single most useful thing a Decatur property owner can do before hiring anyone. Sec. 9.6.4.A.2 exempts the "Washing of an individual vehicle by the owner of such vehicle while located on the owner's own property and using biodegradable soap only; washing of an individual pet by the owner of such pet while located on the owner's own property using biodegradable soap only."
Count the conditions the City wrote into that one sentence. One vehicle, not a fleet. Washed by the owner of the vehicle, not by a hired crew. On the owner's own property, not on a shared drive or a public apron. Using biodegradable soap only. A homeowner rinsing a car in a Winnona Park driveway is inside the exemption. A contractor running a surface cleaner across a restaurant patio on East Court Square is not, and nothing in Sec. 9.6.4.A.2 makes the soap label decide the question.
Sec. 9.6.4.A.1 carries the general exemption list, and pressure washing wash water appears nowhere on it. Exempt discharges are "Water line flushing performed by a government agency, other potable water sources, landscape irrigation or lawn watering, diverted stream flows, rising ground water, ground water infiltration to storm drains, uncontaminated pumped ground water, foundation or footing drains (not including active groundwater dewatering systems), crawl space pumps, air conditioning condensation, springs, natural riparian habitat or wetland flows, and any other water source not containing pollutants". Landscape irrigation is exempt and a surface wash is not. The closing catch-all covers water "not containing pollutants", and Article 12 has already placed detergents, degreasers, cleaning chemicals and cooking grease inside the definition of a pollutant, so wash water off a dumpster pad or a grease-loaded sidewalk cannot enter through that door either.
The working rule on a Decatur property is therefore short. Wash water goes into containment, onto a pervious area agreed in writing before the crew arrives, or into a recovery tank. Wash water does not go into a curb gutter, a catch basin, or an area drain.
Decatur regulates wash water twice, and the second rule is the one almost nobody reads. Beyond the stormwater ordinance in the Unified Development Ordinance, the general Code carries three sections in Chapter 86, Streets, Sidewalks and Other Public Places, that reach liquid on a public sidewalk regardless of where it eventually drains. All three date to the 1967 Code and all three are still codified.
Sec. 86-17 is the direct one: "It shall be unlawful for any person within the city to allow wastewater from washing cars or from other sources to run across the sidewalk, and such person shall provide a cesspool or sewer to receive such water. Operators of filling stations may not wash their premises between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m." Two rules live in that sentence. Wash water may not cross a sidewalk at all, from any source, and a filling station in Decatur may not wash its own premises during the business day at all.
Sec. 86-18 closes the obvious workaround: "It shall be unlawful for any person to use the streets, sidewalks or gutters as a means of drainage to carry off any used and dirty water or other filthy fluids." Sec. 86-19 addresses the condition the water leaves behind rather than the water itself: "It shall be unlawful for any person to throw or discharge from any lot or building any water, fluid or liquid substance so as to injuriously affect the surface of any city street or sidewalk so as to make it unsafe for travel." A soap film left across a brick sidewalk on the Square after a storefront wash is squarely inside Sec. 86-19, and the slip exposure that follows sits with the property, not with the person who walked on it.
Chapter 86 also puts a clock on the property in the other direction. Sec. 86-2(a) makes it the duty of all property owners "to keep sidewalks, and/or pedestrian rights-of-way on all sides of their property clean and free of papers, cups and waste of any kind on any day except refuse collection day", assigns that duty to the tenant where the property is leased, and provides that after notice from a codes enforcement officer "the owner or tenant shall be given seven days to clean such sidewalks or rights-of-way." Seven days is the whole window. For a Decatur storefront or restaurant that has just been notified, the practical question is not whether to clean the sidewalk but how to clean it without violating Sec. 86-17 on the way.
That combination is what makes downtown Decatur genuinely different from a suburban commercial parcel. The sidewalk is the surface that gets dirty, the sidewalk is the surface the water may not cross, and the sidewalk is the surface a codes enforcement officer looks at. Sidewalk and patio work in Decatur is done with the recovery equipment on site from the first minute, not fetched after a neighbor complains.
Enforcement in Decatur runs through a written notice of violation before any money is at stake, and the sequence is worth more to a property owner than a memorized number. Sec. 9.6.8.B provides that "Whenever the UDO Administrator finds that a violation of this Section has occurred, the UDO Administrator may order compliance by written notice of violation." Note the office. In Decatur the illicit discharge notice comes from the UDO Administrator, while Sec. 9.6.3.D puts general administration of the section with the City Manager and Sec. 9.6.6 gives the City Manager the right to "enter and inspect properties and facilities at reasonable times as often as may be necessary to determine compliance with this Section."
Sec. 9.6.8.B.1 requires the notice to name the alleged violator, describe the property, state the nature of the violation, set out "the remedial measures necessary to restore compliance with this Section and a time schedule for the completion of such remedial action", state the penalties, and state that the determination "may be appealed to the Zoning Board of Appeals by filing a written notice of appeal within 10 calendar days of service of notice of violation." Ten calendar days is a short window for a management company that routes mail through a regional office, and it is the reason a Decatur property should have the site containment record in hand before it is ever asked for one.
Penalties attach only in the terms the Code sets, and Sec. 9.6 sets no figure of its own. Sec. 9.6.8.E provides that "Any violation of this Section is punishable, upon conviction, according to the provisions of Section 1-12 of the Code of Ordinances." Decatur's Section 1-12 supplies the figure: where no specific penalty is provided, a violation "shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $1,000.00 or by imprisonment not exceeding six months, or by a combination of such punishments", and "Each day any violation of any provision of this Code or of any such ordinance, resolution, rule, regulation or order shall continue shall constitute a separate offense."
Every figure in the paragraph above belongs to the City of Decatur and to no other government. Thrare Contracting publishes no penalty number sourced to DeKalb County, to a neighboring city, or to the federal Clean Water Act on this page. Decatur, DeKalb County, Dunwoody, Brookhaven and Gwinnett each set a different instrument with a different shape, and a page that carries one government's number onto another government's parcel is misreporting the law it claims to explain. The large per-day federal figures repeated across the pressure washing trade web trace to secondary blogs rather than to a statute, and a scare number a buyer can disprove in one search destroys the credibility of every accurate sentence beside it.
One clause deserves attention because it reaches the asset rather than the contractor. Sec. 9.6.8.D.1 provides that where an abatement cost goes unpaid, "the charges shall become a special assessment against the property and shall constitute a lien on the property for the amount of the assessment." A contractor can leave the city. A lien attaches to the building.
Sec. 9.6.7 sets a reporting clock that most exterior cleaning quotes never mention. Anyone responsible for a facility or operation with information of a known or suspected release "shall take all necessary steps to ensure the discovery, containment, and cleanup of such release so as to minimize the effects of the discharge", and under Sec. 9.6.7.B that person "shall notify the City Manager or other authorized enforcement agency in person, by phone, or by facsimile no later than 24 hours of the nature, quantity and time of occurrence of the discharge." Sec. 9.6.7.B then requires the phone notice to be "confirmed by written notice addressed and mailed to the City Manager within three business days".
Sec. 9.6.7.B adds a record keeping duty that lands on the property rather than on the vendor: "If the discharge of prohibited materials emanates from a commercial or industrial establishment, the owner or operator of such establishment shall also retain an on-site written record of the discharge and the actions taken to prevent its recurrence. Such records shall be retained for at least three years." Sec. 9.6.7.D makes failure to give notice its own violation, separate from the discharge that triggered it.
Thrare Contracting builds the paperwork for that clock into normal work rather than after an incident. Inlet and grate protection photographs, a written containment method naming the receiving point for that specific address, and a same-day completion record give a Decatur property the contemporaneous evidence Sec. 9.6.7 would otherwise force it to reconstruct from memory. Decatur's Public Works department states on its own Street Cleaning page that streets are swept monthly in the fall and winter season "to keep Decatur clean and prevent debris from entering the storm drains, which flow directly into local waterways", which is the City telling residents plainly that a Decatur storm drain is not a treatment step.
Decatur's tree ordinance turns the ground under a canopy into a regulated surface, and a pressure washing crew that treats a shaded side yard as a convenient release point is working inside a protection zone with rules of its own. Sec. 9.1.13.C lists the damage that must be avoided within a tree protection zone, and two entries name exactly what a wash produces: "Gas, liquid, or solid contamination of the soil" at Sec. 9.1.13.C.3, and "Application of toxic chemicals to tree roots, trunk, or crown" at Sec. 9.1.13.C.4. Sec. 9.1.13.F adds a hard distance: "In no case shall land disturbance activities be conducted within 10 feet of the trunk of a protected tree."
The canopy those rules protect is unusually dense for an inner metro city, and that density is why Decatur surfaces grow biological staining faster than open ones. Sec. 9.1.1.B records the target: "The City's tree canopy goal is a minimum of 65% canopy coverage over the entire City of Decatur", measured every five years against methods similar to the Urban Tree Canopy Assessment and Change Analysis 2009-2019 completed in 2021. On commercial, mixed use, institutional and higher density residential parcels, Sec. 9.1.5.C.2 requires "A minimum amount of 45% tree canopy cover from trees in fair or better-rated condition" on properties in the RS-17, RM-18, RM-22, RM-43, PO, C-1, C-2, C-3, MU, NMU and I districts.
A north facing wall under 45 percent canopy stays damp for most of the day, and a surface that stays damp grows algae and mildew whatever it is made of. The correct response to that in Decatur is frequency and chemistry, not pressure. Raising the pressure on a shaded elevation strips paint from wood trim, erodes soft brick on the older housing stock, and drives water behind cladding, while a sensible interval keeps the growth thin enough to be removed at low pressure. Thrare Contracting plans a Decatur elevation around its exposure rather than its square footage, and the release point for that elevation is chosen before the first section is wet.
Properties on or near a Decatur creek carry a second constraint. Sec. 9.2.5.A.1 requires that "An undisturbed natural vegetative buffer shall be maintained for 50 feet, measured horizontally, on both banks (as applicable) of the stream as measured from the top of the stream bank", and Sec. 9.2.5.A.2 adds a further 25 foot setback beyond that buffer in which all impervious cover is prohibited. A parcel backing onto a stream has less usable pervious ground than its lot size suggests, and on those addresses recovery to a tank is usually the only defensible answer.
Decatur sets its working hours by a numeric sound limit rather than by a list of permitted trades, which changes how a wash is scheduled. Sec. 42-59(16)a of the City of Decatur Code prohibits any person from operating a source of sound "in such a manner as to create a sound level which exceeds the limit of 65 dB(A) between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 9:59 p.m. and the limit of 60 dB(A) between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:59 a.m. more than 20 percent of any measurement period, which period shall not be less than five minutes, or for more than one minute continuously", measured at or beyond the property boundary of the property producing the sound.
Sec. 42-59(8) sets a separate hours rule for building work near housing. Erection, demolition, alteration or repair of any building "in or within 300 feet of any residential zoning district in the city" is prohibited "other than between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday and between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Saturday", except on a permit from the city manager granted for no more than 30 days during an emergency. Sec. 42-59(8) carries its own escape: the subsection does not apply to operations "carried on in such a manner or in such a location as not to create sound exceeding 60 dB(A), when measured at or beyond the property boundary".
Pressure washing is not building erection, demolition, alteration or repair, so Thrare Contracting treats the Sec. 42-59(8) window as a conservative default in Decatur rather than as a rule that names the trade. Decatur's compact block structure is what makes that caution sensible: a commercial parcel on East Howard Avenue or Church Street can sit within 300 feet of a residential district and inside a boundary measurement at the same time, and Sec. 42-57 separately prohibits "any unreasonably loud, disturbing and unnecessary noise within the city" at any hour. Sec. 42-56 punishes a noise violation under the same Section 1-12 that reaches an illicit discharge.
Sec. 86-17 adds a hours restriction of its own for one property type. A filling station in Decatur may not wash its premises between 7:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. A Decatur fuel or convenience site with a canopy and forecourt to clean is therefore a scheduled evening or early morning job by ordinance, and that schedule is written into the quote rather than discovered on the day.
Thrare Contracting quotes a Decatur property as named sub-scopes rather than as a service list, because the surfaces behave differently and the containment differs with them.
Thrare Contracting states the price boundary in advance rather than discovering it halfway through the job. Carried inside a quoted Decatur wash:
Quoted as separate lines, because folding them into a wash rate hides them:
Thrare Contracting publishes no unit rates on this page. A shaded north elevation under Decatur canopy and an open south elevation are different jobs at identical square footage, and a rate quoted without the surface condition behind it misleads the buyer who relies on it. Program structure, recurring schedules and portfolio pricing are set out on the commercial property programs page and the commercial services page, which carry the company wide policy this page deliberately does not restate.
Decatur bills stormwater by impervious area rather than by lot size, and the thresholds are published in the same ordinance article as the discharge rule. Article 12 of the Unified Development Ordinance defines developed land as "property altered from its natural state by construction or installation of more than 200 square feet of impervious surfaces", and defines an equivalent residential unit as "4,000 square feet of impervious surfaces". Sec. 9.8.2.B then bills all developed land that is not a single-family dwelling unit "for one equivalent residential unit, as defined by this Section, for each 4,000 square feet of impervious surfaces or partial increment thereof located on the property."
Two consequences follow for a Decatur owner. Sec. 9.8.3.C makes a credit available for on-site stormwater control "up to 40 percent", proportional to how far the on-site systems meet the standards in the City's Stormwater Utility Service Fee Credit Technical Manual, so a property with functioning on-site control has a reason to keep it functioning. Sec. 9.8.4.A charges "a late charge of one percent of the unpaid balance of any stormwater utility service fee bill" when the bill becomes delinquent, compounding monthly while it stays unpaid.
A stormwater bill authorizes nothing, and that is the part worth stating plainly. Paying the fee or holding a credit under Sec. 9.8.3 does not create any right to discharge wash water, because Sec. 9.6.4.A prohibits the discharge regardless of what the utility account says. The fee funds the system. The ordinance governs what may enter it.
Thrare Contracting prices adjacent scopes on one trip, because a second mobilization to the same Decatur address is a cost the property pays twice. Common pairings are gutter cleaning in Decatur run before the wash so roof leaders are not discharging debris onto a cleaned elevation, roof cleaning above the elevations, parking lot striping after the flatwork has dried, and grounds maintenance on the same visit. Neighboring jurisdictions carry their own ordinances rather than this one: Dunwoody, Brookhaven, Stone Mountain, and metro Atlanta generally.
Rare Earth Ltd holds DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, qualifies as a small disadvantaged business, uses E-Verify under company identification number 2748681, and is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE 9JAV8. Those registrations, with the agency that issued each one, are listed on the credentials and compliance page and on the DBE and MBE page.
Thrare Contracting is based in Atlanta and serves Decatur as a service area. Rare Earth Ltd, trading as Thrare Contracting, works across Decatur, Avondale Estates, Scottdale and the wider DeKalb County submarkets, and the company address is 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350.
A property inside the Decatur city limits is governed by the City of Decatur's own rule at Sec. 9.6.3.B of the Unified Development Ordinance, which states that "The provisions of this Section shall apply throughout the corporate limits of the City, Georgia." DeKalb County Code Sec. 22.5-11(a) applies the county chapter "throughout unincorporated DeKalb County" and preserves county authority inside a city only under interjurisdictional agreements, and DeKalb County Sec. 22.5-4(c)(8) defines the county storm sewer system to exclude conveyances "located within the boundaries of a city located within the county". Thrare Contracting read no agreement between DeKalb County and the City of Decatur and makes no claim about one.
Wash water may not run across a sidewalk in Decatur. City of Decatur Code Sec. 86-17 provides that "It shall be unlawful for any person within the city to allow wastewater from washing cars or from other sources to run across the sidewalk, and such person shall provide a cesspool or sewer to receive such water." Sec. 86-18 separately makes it unlawful "to use the streets, sidewalks or gutters as a means of drainage to carry off any used and dirty water or other filthy fluids", and Sec. 86-19 reaches any liquid that makes a street or sidewalk surface unsafe for travel.
Biodegradable soap does not make wash water legal to discharge in Decatur. Article 12 of the Decatur Unified Development Ordinance defines a pollutant to include "detergents (biodegradable or otherwise); degreasers; cleaning chemicals", so the label does not change the status of the water under the Sec. 9.6.4.A prohibition. The one washing exemption, at Sec. 9.6.4.A.2, covers the "Washing of an individual vehicle by the owner of such vehicle while located on the owner's own property and using biodegradable soap only", which does not reach a hired crew, a fleet, or a commercial surface.
City of Decatur Code Sec. 9.6.8.E provides that a violation of the illicit discharge section "is punishable, upon conviction, according to the provisions of Section 1-12 of the Code of Ordinances", and Decatur's Section 1-12 sets a fine "not exceeding $1,000.00 or by imprisonment not exceeding six months, or by a combination of such punishments", with each day a violation continues constituting a separate offense. That figure belongs to the City of Decatur, and Thrare Contracting publishes no penalty number from another jurisdiction on this page.
City of Decatur Code Sec. 42-59(16)a limits any source of sound to 65 dB(A) between 7:00 a.m. and 9:59 p.m. and 60 dB(A) between 10:00 p.m. and 6:59 a.m., measured at or beyond the property boundary. Sec. 42-59(8) restricts building erection, demolition, alteration and repair within 300 feet of a residential zoning district to 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, and Thrare Contracting treats that window as a conservative default for exterior cleaning even though pressure washing is not building work. Sec. 86-17 separately bars a filling station from washing its own premises between 7:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Send the address and the surfaces. Thrare Contracting confirms the parcel, names the containment method for that address in writing, and quotes the scope with the boundary stated in advance.