Coming to Puget Sound? Illegal to dump waste cleaner than shoreside teated?

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Marin said:
What difference does more regulation make if it doesn't change what people are supposed to be doing anyway?

You're right, not enforcing regulations doesn't give much credibility to the value of the regulation. But if you don't even have the regulation, enforcement, no matter how little, can't be done at all.

Making Puget Sound an NDZ means that on paper, at least, the pollutants entering the Sound will be reduced. This is particularly important in critical areas like Hood Canal.

Now whether these regulations are enforced or not is another matter. Enforcement priority is determined by the courts or the enforcement agencies or governments. But if, for example, the marine life die-off in Hood Canal becomes serious enough to warrant taking heavy action, having the NDZ requirement in place means the enforcement agencies have an enforceable regulation in place to enforce.

If the NDZ designation is not already in place, it means that a ton of time will be required to create and pass it while the marine life continues to die off.

Anyone who believes the creation of a regulation is going to have an immediate effect on fixing a problem is pretty naive, I think. But if you don't at least start with the regulation, you can never have enforcement which means the problem can't be addressed at all, now or in the future.
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I agree with you that the creation of a regulation doesn't guarantee enforcement.

Do we not already have regulations on the books for the dumping of sewage overboard within 3nm? (see below) Is so why do we need more regulation? You CAN NOT pump non-treated sewage overboard. Plain and simple.

If the live a boards or anyone else is dumping raw sewage then they need to be held accountable. Grant you I am looking at this from a recreational boater point of view, but I bet there are also laws already on the books if industry is dumping into Puget Sound illegally.

From: http://www.uscgboating.org/assets/1/workflow_staging/Publications/420.PDF


The discharge of treated sewage is allowed within 3 nautical miles of
shore except in designated “No Discharge Zone” areas (Untreated
sewage may be discharged beyond 3 nautical miles )​



​
A “No Discharge Zone” is a body of water where the discharge of
treated or untreated sewage is prohibited. When operating a vessel
in a No Discharge Zone, the operator must secure the device in a
manner that prevents any discharge. Some acceptable methods are:
padlocking overboard discharge valves in the closed position, using
a non-releasable wire tie to hold overboard discharge valves in the
closed position, closing overboard discharge valves and removing
the handle, and locking the door to the space enclosing the toilets.
Note: these methods for preventing the overboard discharge are only
required when operating in a No Discharge Zone. State and local laws​

may place further restrictions on overboard discharges.
 
Pineapple Girl said:
Ok PNW boaters, I am confused. Isn't it already illegal for boaters to discharge untreated waste in Puget Sound? per the 3 mile limit rule? So making it a NDZ steps it up to where even treated waste cannot be discharged? As Marin pointed out, there are not that many recreational boaters with waste treatment devices. So why punish that small segment that have chosen to spend a few boat bucks to be able to LEGALLY discharge their waste by making it a NDZ? Why not ENFORCE the current law that untreated waste cannot be discharged? Or am I incorrect and now it is legal to dump untreated waste in Puget Sound? :confused:
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What she says.:thumb:
 
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I'm pretty sure people who intend to dump sewage (treated or otherwise) overboard will continue to do it regardless of laws or "zones". It's as simple as making sure there's not another boat within 500 yards or so and then hitting the switch.

These are "feel good" laws intended to get politicians publicity and hide some of the other laws they are passing.

The federal government was considering requiring all boat owners to get a permit for runoff (from rain and from washing) from their boats untill BoatUS stepped in. Hows that for the people we elect to public office? :rolleyes:
 
Pineapple Girl said:
Ok PNW boaters, I am confused. Isn't it already illegal for boaters to discharge untreated waste in Puget Sound? per the 3 mile limit rule? So making it a NDZ steps it up to where even treated waste cannot be discharged?
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Correct. Because treated waste is not "good waste." It's just "not as bad" waste. All it means is that the waste meets some government standard for waste.

Are you willing to drink, or if you were a fish or dolphin or crab live in "treated waste?" If your answer is yes, then you're right, removing the ability to dump treated waste into Puget Sound is meaningless. If your answer is "no," then why shouldn't the water in Puget Sound be cleaned up that much more?

And while the argument can be made that marine "treated waste" meets the same standard set for the treated waste that is dumped into the Sound by the municipalities in the area (and I don't know that it does) the municipal waste enters the Sound in places that have been deemed to have very high rates of water exchange. But boaters can dump their "treated waste" wherever they want, even in super-sensitive places like Hood Canal or low-exchange rate bays and anchorages.

You're correct in that it is currently illegal for boaters to dump "really bad" untreated waste into Puget Sound. An NDZ would make it illegal for boaters to dump "somewhat less bad" treated waste into Puget Sound, too. From the point of view of the incredibly diverse life that calls Puget Sound home, what's the downside?
 
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A fact that needs to be determined that IF? Puget Sound is exhibiting higher pollution levels than where is this higher pollution coming from? Is it from the shore based population dumping their sewage into sewage plants which then dump it into Puget Sound or is it pleasure boats? Are there any studies on this that is not based on guesses.

I would like to know how anyone can measure the pollution from boats without attaching sensors to the boat that would accurately determine the pollution output from a boat. Anything else is just guessing.

To me, it is easier to blame boaters, if there is really a problem than to go after municipalities whose volume of discharge is millions?, billions? more than pleasure boats. Another case of a government with too many bureaucrats trying to keep busy.

Ron
 
Ah, Marin I see your point re low flow areas. Seems like there, as here w Richardson bay, those areas could be made NDZ and areas w better flow left as they are? In any case, it seems the idea is just being "floated" at this point?

Walt, PG is better than some of my other nicknames.
 
The health of Puget Sound is being addressed at many, many levels. Boaters are not being singled out. It's just that this particular consideration of an NDZ is aimed at vessels. There are ongoing studies of the effect of storm water runoff, agricultural runoff, industrial runoff, municipal treatment standards, pesticide and fertilizer migration into the Sound, etc. etc, etc. Some of these may-- or already have-- resulted in new or tightened restrictions.

This is not a closely-held secret. Read the daily paper(s) and these topics come up again and again throughout the year.

So don't go thinking that the major big focus is on boaters. We are just one of many, many factors that are tied into the health of Puget Sound. Compared to some, our effect is pretty small potatoes. Compared to others, we may represent a bigger impact.

But whether you dump a ton of sh*t into the Sound or just a teaspoon, it's still sh*t as far as the life in the Sound is concerned. If you lived in the Sound, or if your livelihood depended on the health of the Sound, what's important is not that this guy dumped a ton of sh*t in the water and that guy only dumped a teaspoon. What's important is that you're living in a ton and a teaspoon of human sh*t.
 
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Hey, guys. Please "hold it" until you've gone 40 miles westward so you're outside the three-mile limit.

img_136481_0_b56d07f2ecb77d336c8563c2835260b0.jpg
 
Marin said:
I don't believe the NDZ regulations in effect or being considered include gray water. Even if they were, this would not impact our own boating at all. We use very little fresh water on a cruise. Washing dishes and showers are all and we use very little water in each case. And it would be comparatively simple to plumb the sinks and shower to go to the holding tanks.

But I'm not advocating this other than thinking it would be a good idea for new-built boats to incorporate it in their designs.

Toilet sewage, treated or not, is the issue at hand here. And I see no penalty whatsoever to boaters to making all of Puget Sound an NDZ. Other than the relative (I suspect) few who have a treatment system on board and who won't be able to use it anymore.

Everyone else is supposed to pump to shore facilities now, so nothing changes.
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Flaw in the logic.

The waste that is pumped out to be treated in the municipal sewer plant reenters the sound. When it does, according to figures from the EPA, Seattle Metro, etc, it is measurably dirtier after treatment in the municipal system than if it is treated onboard.

The stuff we flush from home, or pump out into the marina pump out, doesn't just magically "disappear", it winds up right back in the sound. Less effectively treated.

So it's all going into the sound anyway, the only difference is whether it should be legal to treat it on board, to a standard *higher* than municipal treatment achieves.

Nobody, at least that I know, is advocating that raw sewage should be a permissible discharge.
 
Link to the EPA test, published January 2010 establishing that fecal coliform was as low as non-detectable in tests of the Raritan "Lectra Scan unit.

The only portions of the test where the unit did not perfrom well was during a period when the testers failed to keep brine in the tank. In an actual application aboard a boat, diagnostic fail-safe software would prevent the unit from running without adequate salt or any other fault.

Document Display | NSCEP | US EPA
 
Chuck Gould said:
The waste that is pumped out to be treated in the municipal sewer plant reenters the sound. When it does, according to figures from the EPA, Seattle Metro, etc, it is measurably dirtier after treatment in the municipal system than if it is treated onboard.
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Depends on who you talk to and who you choose to believe. A fellow in our neighborhood works for the new Brightwater plant and is also a boater. According to him the output of Brightwater is considerably "purer" than the standards set for on-board marine treatment systems and the output of the Lectrasan system on his own boat which he told me he tested in their lab because he was curious.

And there is also the issue of where treated municipal sewage enters the Sound as I mentioned earlier.

In any event I think designating Puget Sound, if not the entire Salish Sea, an NDZ is an outstanding idea and I very much hope they decide to do it. As I said, it will have zero effect on our boating and I see no downside to it whatsoever.

However I completely agree with THD when he wrote earlier that any NDZ designation should be applied to every vessel-- recreational, cruise ship, commercial carrier, fishboat, etc.

Now I haven't heard their side of the story so don't know what reasons they might give for being exempted or if these reasons are truly credible. But at this point I think all vessels in Puget Sound should have to comply with any NDZ regulations that might be put into place.

But if in the end an NDZ is applied only to recreational vessels, that's better than nothing as far as I'm concerned.
 
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BTW, the claim that sending on-board treated waste into the shoreside treatment plants will increase the pollution going into the Sound is not valid even if it is a bit "cleaner" than the output of the plant.

Regardless of whether you dump your treated waste directly into the Sound from your boat or send it to a shoreside treatment facility via a pumpout, your treated waste and the municipal waste are going to get mixed together. The only difference is where they mix--- in the Sound or in the treatment plant. So the amount of waste and the level of pollution ultimately ending up in the Sound will remain the same.

The difference is that if your boat is down at the bottom end of Hood Canal where the water exchange rate is extremely low--up to a year to exchange completely in some places-- your "treated" waste will stay there and add to the problem. If you pump your treated waste into a shoreside pumpout in Seattle or Everett or wherever that feeds it to a municipal treatment plant, your treated waste still ends up in the Sound but at least it will be dumped out in a high water-exchange area.
 
More power grabbing by unelected bureaucrats from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The sky’s the limit when it comes to imposed regulations from this group. Here in the Puget Sound when it comes to water pollution, the government itself is usually the biggest offender. Routinely we hear about millions of gallons of raw sewage spilling directly into Puget Sound from various municipal sewage treatment plants.

SteveH
 
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I'd like to see a NDZ in some of our local areas where there is little water movement. We have much less traffic than the PNG, but the water quality is still affected.

The treated systems obviously negatively affect the water quality. If the output was as clean as some seem to believe, you wouldn't need to discharge. Just flow back to the fresh water tank and have a closed loop system.

Marin is right regarding the comparisons to treated municipal water. The location of any modern treatment plant outflow is very carefully studied to ensure the dissipation rate is maximised. It would be impossible to ensure that boats dumping treated waste do the same.

Our generation (baby boomers) have made more of a mess of this planet than any other in history. We are kicking and screaming as the next generation is trying to clean things up.

Hopefully our grandchildren won't need rules and enforcement to ensure the oceans are respected. It will be just common sense.
 
While I like clean water too...some of this can get rediculous.

Every year some sewage plant near me dumps MILLIONS of gallons of raw sewage because of some system fault.....more than all the boats in the area could dump all summer long on continous flow by a long shot...yet nothing ever comes of it...no attempt to make the system better, contain it or even worry about it.

They close shellfishing in the area for a week and move on.

The same after a heavy rain and some minor floodign where local cesspools flood and wash into the local bays...close shellfishing for a week and move on.

I hardly think the "treated" effluent from boats is a widespread threat as there are so many other sources of sewage and dangerous pollution...

Based on most even boaters reaction to working on their own head systems.....I think MOST people overreact when it come to sewage.:D
 
If they really want to clean up the water, they will kill all the fish and marine mamals that live in it. They pee and poop in the water.

Same with land based animals living on the land near the water. Their waste washes into the water.
 
Ron, that is a bogus argument. The eco system can work within its own parameters most of the time. Man has come along and upset the balance so badly that it can't meep up.
 
Tom.B said:
Ron, that is a bogus argument. The eco system can work within its own parameters most of the time. Man has come along and upset the balance so badly that it can't meep up.
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Not "bogus" at all. There are many sources of polution and fish and mamals (and birds) are sources of polution just as humans are.
 
I understand that, but the volume of pollution by humans and livestock and farming is more than the system can take. The system con control the ammount of waste it produces naturally. It can't control the order of magnatude that we add to it.
 
rwidman said:
Not "bogus" at all. There are many sources of polution and fish and mamals (and birds) are sources of polution just as humans are.
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No Ron, it is totally bogus and totally ignorant, only demonstrates you know less than nothing about ecology and natural ecosystems. It's ignorance like that in the general population which encourages the greenies to go to sometimes irrational extremes to protect us from ourselves.
 
Wow, this thread has sunk to the level where some people are no longer carrying on intelligent discussions, but rather have resorted to name calling.

Caltex, Is that really the best way you can respond to something you don't agree with?
 
caltexflanc said:
No Ron, it is totally bogus and totally ignorant, only demonstrates you know less than nothing about ecology and natural ecosystems. It's ignorance like that in the general population which encourages the greenies to go to sometimes irrational extremes to protect us from ourselves.
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I'm pretty sure I read the biggest source of polloution in many of the Eastern shore creeks emptying into the Chesapeake are the pig farms.

I think the message here is why bust the stones of boaters (usually without significant help to resolve the issue of the difficulty in removing waste from boats) when they are so far dow the list of polluters.

I think all of us would be glad to help when the other sources are attacked as vigorously AND we get our fair share of supplemental funding to make or lives easier like the other pigs at the trough so to speak...:D
 
Do we know that they aren't? Any of you guys pig farmers? All we need is a lobbyist group like the farmers have and we would be all set. Otherwise, we/you guys have to accept that the farmers get to pollute and we don't. If that is what is happening and I am only speculating. Like everyone else here I suppose.
 
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To add a little more confusion to the marine water pollution arguments, the journal SCIENCE (29 Mar. 2002) reported on a study which tracked the biological sources of fecal bacterial in Virginia watersheds. Only 15% of E. coli bacteria had a human origin (i.e. septic runoff and boat discharge). The remainder came from other animal hosts, the largest contributor being waterfowl with 32.5% of the total. Similar studies are being carried out in California, Washington, and Oregon.

Whats next? Diapers for geese?
 
Living in Puget Sound ( notice I refuse to use " Salish Sea".. a bigger load of crap than this topic ) and being in the building industry we are constantly bombarded by WA. D.O.E. I do support no discharge of untreated waste in all of Puget Sound, and try my best to uphold that at all times. But... the real issue in Puget Sound is untreated septic discharge from old non conforming septic systems, over flow of untreated waste from municipal waste treatment plants ( unintentional ) and street run off.

How many times have we heard in the news that 250,000+ of untreated waste was dumped into P.S in a rain storm or from a "systems issue"?. We now keep a boat in Portland and the Tri Cities had a dump last year of 4,000,000 gallons of untreated raw sewage into the Columbia River creating quite a mess ( chime in GFC with details ). Keep in mind that D.O.E. needs to justify their budget and thus needs to constantly come up with fresh ideas to be able to sustain their jobs.

I agree with stiff fines to enforce pump out regs. of non treated effluent...But don't do it at the cost of those who have been doing the right thing and treating their waste.

HOLLYWOOD
 
Keith said:
To add a little more confusion to the marine water pollution arguments, the journal SCIENCE (29 Mar. 2002) reported on a study which tracked the biological sources of fecal bacterial in Virginia watersheds. Only 15% of E. coli bacteria had a human origin (i.e. septic runoff and boat discharge). The remainder came from other animal hosts, the largest contributor being waterfowl with 32.5% of the total. Similar studies are being carried out in California, Washington, and Oregon.

Whats next? Diapers for geese?
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No, get ride of them, the fish, and the marine mamals as I suggested above. :banghead:

For those who didn't get it, this was a bit of sarcasm. Of couse we can't kill all the fish and mamals, but what this thread started out as was a complaint that the government is proposing outlawing the discharge of treated sewage from boats. Sewage that is treated to the point where it's cleaner than the sewage discharged by municipal treatment plants.

Boaters are an easy target, There are few of us compared to non boaters and many non boaters look at us as some kind of rich, elite group that can be brought down a notch. Politicians can pass these law, pleasing a large portion of the electorate and assure themselves of re-election.

As I posted above, these are "feel good" laws. Laws that don't accomplish anything, but make the public think things are somehow getting better.

As I also posted above, anyone who is inclined to dump sewage, treated or not, into the waterways will continue to do so, he or she will just look first to make sure no one is watching.
 
Tom.B said:
........... Any of you guys pig farmers? ..........
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We don't have to be pig farmers to understand that pigs poop and if all the poop isn't contained and disposed of properly, it's going to end up in the waterways.
 
You have to be a pig farmer to understand if they are the target of regulation too. I would bet they would have the exact same argument as you. That they are easy targets. What some here are missing is that a combined effort of small steps across a wide range of polluters is what eventually leads to cleaner waters.
 
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