Environmental friendliness is one of the main attractions of removing coatings via the practice of ultra high-pressure water blasting. Especially in potentially sensitive settings, UHP water blasting reduces the possibility of introducing waste elements into the environment. The coating industry uses water jet cleaning primarily for re-coating or relining projects in which there is an adequate pre-existing surface profile. The degrees of surface cleanliness cited above to be achieved by water blaster cleaning methods are not intended to require that a surface profile be present or defined prior to coating application.

Water blaster cleaning reduce and may completely remove water soluble surface contaminants, notably those contaminant found at the bottom of pits on the surface of corroded metallic substrates. Water blaster cleaning also helps remove oil, grease rust, and other corroded products, and other foreign matter(for example, shotcrete spatter) from the surface, and is used when it is a more feasible method of surface preparation than, for example abrasive blast cleaning, power or hand tool cleaning, or chemical stripping. Water blaster cleaning may be used when the application of high-performance coatings requires extensive surface preparation, surface decontamination or both.