Bartow County, GA Water Use Rules: Recycled Water Rules (2026)

Bartow County Code § 18-130 requires any commercial conveyor car wash, defined as a commercial car wash where the vehicle moves on a conveyor belt during the wash regardless of whether the driver stays in the vehicle, that is permitted and constructed after January 1, 2011 to install a recycled water system capturing and reusing water previously used in wash or rinse cycles. The ordinance sets a numeric floor: at least 50 percent of the water the facility uses must be recycled water rather than fresh water drawn from the county system.

The requirement is written into Bartow County's building code chapter and enforced by Building Inspections as part of the commercial permitting process for a new or reconstructed conveyor wash facility, alongside the general building permit requirement in § 18-117. The mandate carries a narrow exemption: it does not apply to self-service car wash bays, where the customer washes their own vehicle, or to in-bay automatic washes where the vehicle stays stationary and the wash equipment moves around it; only the conveyor-belt format is covered. The same recycled water text appears a second time in the code at § 18-132, adopted by a separate 2011 ordinance, an artifact of two amendments each redesignated by the code's editor to avoid a numbering conflict, but the substantive requirement, the 50 percent recycled water floor for new conveyor car washes, is identical in both sections.