Keep water clean, wash your car on grass or gravel.

Not only does every coastal state suffer from polluted and contaminated beaches, but those problems resulted in more than 20,000 closing and swimming advisory days in 2008 alone—such is the sorry state of affairs noted in NRDC's latest report, Testing the Waters.

The hopeful news is, one of the major causes of beach pollution is storm water runoff, which we can help prevent through some simple changes around the home. Some western states and cities already require that car owners wash their cars on grass, gravel or other permeable surfaces to prevent the runoff of oil, grease and metals into our storm drains. By switching to one of the several waterless car wash products you’ll do even more to prevent water waste and keep pollutants out of the environment. If you find they don’t clean your car as thoroughly as you’d like, visit a commercial car wash, which are required by the Clean Water Act to send waste water to treatment plants.

For other ways to reduce stormwater runoff, back click to Got a Minute? A Morning? A Month?.

Also, check out this NRDC slideshow with examples of communities across America cleaning up their water – and saving money – with low impact development.

For more, see what these Smarter Cities are doing to protect water quality: Burnsville, MN; Norwalk, CT, Kansas, City, MO, Ann Arbor,MI, Santa Monica, CA and Denver, CO.