Sewage discharges vs. pumping overboard

The following is a quote from a recent article on the Politico website concerning the rehab of St. Louis's sewer system.

"About 50 times a year, after major rainstorms, St. Louis’ sewers overflow, and 13 billion gallons of sewage-contaminated storm water escapes into the Mississippi River and its tributaries. It’s an everyday environmental nightmare and a risk to human health. And it’s a common, if largely undiscussed, urban American affliction."

My goodness,13 billion gallons EVERY year! Now, I don't pump overboard in regulated waters and am not advocating doing so. We boat on the Chesapeake. Can anyone say Baltimore? NDZs? Please.

By the way, Budweiser is brewed with this water. Maybe that explains why it is such a lousy beer. Or maybe it's the rice in the brew.

It ain't just an east coast thing. Seattle does it as well as several smaller cities in Eastern WA that I have heard about.


Puget Sound just became a NDZ. I wonder if they'll go after Seattle the next time they dump a bazillion gallons or so into the sound.

Seattle is still pumping since the February "malfunction". Of course it's not talked about

The Med is another interesting example. A relatively enclosed body of water, it has become the target of draconian regulation by EU authorities. Ships are inspected upon entry and turned away if the sewage system is capable of pumping overboard. Aircraft photograph offenders, who are then fined to the tune of a sizable fraction of the value of their vessel.

All of this makes some sort of twisted sense to the regulatory minded, until you consider that most of the cities on the North African coast run open sewers. Sadly, further discussion on the details of the underlying MARPOL and its RCD hellspawn crosses over into the forbidden sphere of politics, so I'll be quiet now.

catalinajack said:

The following is a quote from a recent article on the Politico website concerning the rehab of St. Louis's sewer system.

"About 50 times a year, after major rainstorms, St. Louis’ sewers overflow, and 13 billion gallons of sewage-contaminated storm water escapes into the Mississippi River and its tributaries. It’s an everyday environmental nightmare and a risk to human health. And it’s a common, if largely undiscussed, urban American affliction."

My goodness,13 billion gallons EVERY year! Now, I don't pump overboard in regulated waters and am not advocating doing so. We boat on the Chesapeake. Can anyone say Baltimore? NDZs? Please.

By the way, Budweiser is brewed with this water. Maybe that explains why it is such a lousy beer. Or maybe it's the rice in the brew.

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And, that is replicated, all over the US, every time there is a big rainstorm. Blaming boaters for E. coli levels is like blaming fish peeing for rising ocean levels.

Some of these articles can be deceptive. Trying to put it into perspective is difficult. "Sewage-contaminated storm water". What exactly does that mean ? Is it 100 gallons of raw sewage and 100,000,000 gallons of rain water or half and half ? It does not give you the right information although the sewage treatment plants are required to provide an estimate of the untreated raw sewage possibly released.
Then you have to consider the degree of influence that has on the Miss. R. at that location which typically flows around 2,550,000 gallons per second. I have not done the math but I would guess 13 billion is about an hour or so of flow mixing.
I do agree that this type situation does happen all over the country and world.

So with Puget Sound a NDZ, will any yacht clubs or other environmental group take Seattle to court to enforce the new regulation. Yes regulation, not law.

I missed any final announcement on the NDZ in Puget Sound. Anyone have a link?

Rulemaking

What is the Status of the Puget Sound NDZ | No Discharge Zone | Clean Green Boating | Washington State Department of Ecology

The discharge rules are for politicos to point at , to show how much they "care".

Nothing to do with reality , or polution .

Spot on, Fred.

Sadly the sewerage treatment facilities around the country are in a poor state, like others have stated not much additional funding goes that way as its not a big news story/political advantage.

Jay N said:

Rulemaking

What is the Status of the Puget Sound NDZ | No Discharge Zone | Clean Green Boating | Washington State Department of Ecology

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Thanks Jay.

As the state of Washington's EPA has stated "there are sufficient Pump-out-stations in Puget Sound", The problem is that a lot of them are not operational.

Maybe municipalities are an order of magnitude larger a problem but I'm still trying to figure out how the last twenty marinas I've been in don't have a mobile pump out service and yet 90% of liveaboards haven't moved their boat for a year of more.

ulysses said:

Some of these articles can be deceptive. Trying to put it into perspective is difficult. "Sewage-contaminated storm water". What exactly does that mean ? Is it 100 gallons of raw sewage and 100,000,000 gallons of rain water or half and half ? It does not give you the right information although the sewage treatment plants are required to provide an estimate of the untreated raw sewage possibly released.
Then you have to consider the degree of influence that has on the Miss. R. at that location which typically flows around 2,550,000 gallons per second. I have not done the math but I would guess 13 billion is about an hour or so of flow mixing.
I do agree that this type situation does happen all over the country and world.

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Yes, it is not 13 billion gallons of raw sewage. It's just the entire raw sewage discharge for the period of time that the system is overflowing and dumping everything into the river. That's a lot of raw sewage. Yes, the M. River flows a lot of water and I guess you are suggesting that the sewage gets lost in the volume and matters little. That's the point, isn't it? All that sewage year after year yet our do-gooder, feel-good-about-legislation legislators concern themselves about a few boaters. Yes, few, because add up all the boats and I'll bet if all dumped overboard it wouldn't amount to near the pollution that these cities dump on one good rainy day. And never mind the idocy of prohibiting dumping from an Electro-san.

Have a niece with phd in bio-remediation - her favorite saying: "the solution to pollution is dilution"

Here is part of the situation. Each City and/or municipal sewerage treatment facility is permitted to operate under their individual state regulations and EPA Laws. Most of their problems such as we are discussing are from old infrastructure that is subject to direct inflow and infiltration. Whiting their permitting process most of those city's have a set amount of time to address and correct such I and I problems with the state having somewhat control over the reporting and operations of those facilities. They do not have the same control (yet) on vessels and private craft.

Consider the alternative: popular anchorages, harbors or marinas would become open sewers of boaters were permitted to dump overboard whenever and wherever. Then again, I may be over-sensitive, because even seeing shampoo and soap bubbles from grey water discharge seems inappropriate to me.

Mr W H

Your response makes perfect if your from Kalif. We use Joy and Dawn on the boat to clean dishes and I see no harm in doing so. Many will regulate boating out of existence.

This entire NDZ B.S. is out of control! DO GOODERS lobby and get unreasonable.....and many times unenforceable laws passed, go around beating their chests humming "Oh what a good boy I am!"

Here in Massachusetts.....that relies on California to help pass wacky laws has made just about all our waters NDZs and the GOODIES can now organize sea tours to view the seals!

Recent estimates of seal population just along along Cape Cod range from 30,000 to 60,000+ with each seal helping to deplete our waters of fish with their estimated 35#s of fish/seal/day. AND THEY PUMP OUT (you know what ) DAILY AT LEISURE!

So here we go again now that I dropped a brick into the poop.



EDIT: And yes, the local towns and cities are first to pump into our habors whenever heavy rain occurs

For what it is worth....Former Washington State governor Dixie Lee Ray, also former Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission wrote a book titled "Environmental Overkill". In that book she reported that the water in Puget Sound is nitrogen starved because there was insufficient water exchange and existing flora and fauna consumed the nitrogen. She was adamantly opposed to point source pollution, like leaking septic tanks, raw sewage discharges, industrial run off, etc. She also thought that the best thing that could happen to Puget Sound would be for mariners to flush their johnnies as they motored along, dispersing a source for needed nitrogen.

That said, there is no safe level of human e coli in drinking water, so treating waste to kill the bugs before discharge is a responsible practice. A No Discharge Zone doesn't make sense, and arguably, if Governor Ray is correct, does more harm than good.

In and around the European canals its quite rare to find a pump out station. On the canal du Midi rental boats have systems to comply with regs but are never used.
I only know of 1 municipal station pump out in Frontignan on the canal Rhone a Sete.
This was fitted as a precaution after an outbreak of unrelated disease in the oyster beds.
In actual fact the Romans used large oyster beds at the mouths of ports and rivers to filter the water, oysters were harvested as food for the workers.
The problem is that if the jobsworths push the NDZ's there's a danger that the water becomes too clean and upsets the eco balance.
For example, in N, Ireland the authorities clamped down on discharge into Lough Erne and the water became so clear that the world class fishing matches were abandoned and there is Japanese knotweed.
This knotweed invasion has led to restrictions on cruising and the local authorities have had to buy weed cutters to keep navigation open.

FoxtrotCharlie said:

Have a niece with phd in bio-remediation - her favorite saying: "the solution to pollution is dilution"

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I think the solution is "Less People".
Every time it rains sewerage enters Sydney Harbor and the beaches. The contribution by boaters is infinitesimal.

Aw gee Bruce,
Less people ?
We've just booked tickets to visit OZ courtesy of Messrs Rolls-Royce and Boeing.

"We've just booked tickets to visit OZ courtesy of Messrs Rolls-Royce and Boeing."

Stay home and send your billfold?

FF, yes I know those guys throw money around like a man with no arms, or slink off to the dunny when its their turn to buy a round of tinnies. Only joking guys !

Woodland Hills said:

Consider the alternative: popular anchorages, harbors or marinas would become open sewers of boaters were permitted to dump overboard whenever and wherever.

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Yes, the issue is discharges in marinas and popular anchorages. No one wants to swim by a brown bomber.

OTOH, esteemed Scripps oceanographer John D. Isaacs many years ago noted that humans take huge amounts of biological material from the sea and return very little, often poisoning it on the way with our "treatments".

Truth be told, poop is really objectionable only to humans, not sea creatures (within reason). So not fouling our own nests can be our personal rule of thumb and rationale. Anyone telling me I can't pee into the ocean at anytime will be ignored, or silently cursed in latin.

In the year we've had our boat, I've never seen anyone other than us use the pumpout station at our marina.

Star0210 said:

In the year we've had our boat, I've never seen anyone other than us use the pumpout station at our marina.

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Hopefully they just don't use their boats. Otherwise, that is kind of sad.