Pump Out Rant

[dennismenace111]

WOW...I'm really amazed at the number of boaters that expect free pump outs!?
If you really feel pump outs should be provided free why not buy some waterfront property install a pull-out and post a sign offering free pump-outs?

Pardon me... I didnt know I was in the presence of a Rockefeller..

 

[BandB]

Pardon me... I didnt know I was in the presence of a Rockefeller..

Wifey B: Pardon you if you think it takes a Rockefeller to pay $5-15 for a pump out. I must point out this reminder, truly poor people do not own boats.

 

[Bacchus]

Maybe you can clarify where you expect the funds come from to do what I stated and provide the service for free?
It seems like charging a reasonable fee to those requesting the service is the fairest of many other options... those that need, want and use it pay for it.

Pardon me... I didnt know I was in the presence of a Rockefeller..

 

[Bacchus]

What did they tax to provide the funds?
Even the Federal $ raised via boat related taxes & fees used to fund things like boat launches allow charging a nominal fee to help staff and maintain the facilities.
A direct fee on users seems fairer than imposing a fee on something else not directly related (fuel, sales tax, property tax, etc) is a poor way to provide a service.

There are places that have imposed pump-out taxes in order to provide funds for the machinery. There you deserve free.

 

[Alaskan Sea-Duction]

Wondering if it's just my bad luck or are others experiencing this as well, but I have run into more non-working pump out stations this year than ever! It's especially frustrating when you don't find out it's on the blink until you've docked and tied up, essentially wasting a good docking job on nothing!

Hey Max, I see your are in the PNW, Puget Sound. Those who initiated the NDZ for ALL of Puget Sound told us there were plenty of pump-outs. It would appear they lied. Politicians truthful and honest, yeah right.

So travel north until you cross over into Canada, then dump your tank overboard. Perfectly legal and No passport required.

 

[CaptTom]

It seems like charging a reasonable fee to those requesting the service is the fairest of many other options... those that need, want and use it pay for it.

I think the nuance here is that "those requesting the service" are the folks who pushed for the restrictive regulations. I don't know any boaters who feel they "need" or "want" those broadly-written laws.

I think too many politicians see this as a way to appear to be doing something "green." It's politically expedient to punish "those rich boaters" without having to address the real problems; untreated discharges from malfunctioning municipal treatment plants, agricultural and home landscaping runoff, industrial pollution, etc.

Nobody votes for people who want to spend tax money on fixing THOSE problems!

 

[sbu22]

Must be local phenomena - this thread caused me to reflect on the marinas and fuel docks I've used in LA, MS, AL, TX, and the Florida panhandle. I'd say the majority had pumpout stations that were operational and free. Some marinas (Gulfport comes to mind) have the vac system piped to the head of each slip. Some have carts. Some are dedicated positions near a fuel dock. Some insist an employee perform the transfer. "Free" is a relative term - I'm certain their business model incorporates the capital and O&M costs somewhere. Point being, if they can do it here, I don't see why it's not feasible elsewhere.

 

[BandB]

Must be local phenomena - this thread caused me to reflect on the marinas and fuel docks I've used in LA, MS, AL, TX, and the Florida panhandle. I'd say the majority had pumpout stations that were operational and free. Some marinas (Gulfport comes to mind) have the vac system piped to the head of each slip. Some have carts. Some are dedicated positions near a fuel dock. Some insist an employee perform the transfer. "Free" is a relative term - I'm certain their business model incorporates the capital and O&M costs somewhere. Point being, if they can do it here, I don't see why it's not feasible elsewhere.

Free in most cases is to marina customers. Seems to me the ones who complain are those who anchor and buy nothing from the marina, then want a pump out.

 

[dennismenace111]

Wifey B: Pardon you if you think it takes a Rockefeller to pay $5-15 for a pump out. I must point out this reminder, truly poor people do not own boats.

Neither should ********.

 

[sbu22]

Yeah - I don't recall making a dedicated "pump out" stop in my case. My inclination would be to extend the courtesy of buying something if I'm using the service. At the same time, most fuel dock pumpouts I'm familiar with (public & private) are unmanned and available 24/7.

 

[BandB]

Neither should ********.

Wifey B: Your insult was censored.

 

[dennismenace111]

Yeah - I don't recall making a dedicated "pump out" stop in my case. My inclination would be to extend the courtesy of buying something if I'm using the service. At the same time, most fuel dock pumpouts I'm familiar with (public & private) are unmanned and available 24/7.

Agreed....but my point was though that 5 years ago, you couldnt walk down a public dock without tripping over a pumpout station. Today, theyre scarce and only at marina's. The city makes all sorts of verbal effort to keep the waterways clean, but its all talk. They've removed almost all the pumpout stations except for three that I know of.

Then there is the other part of the equation. Storm runoff... that pollutes our waterways more than the all the boats in my city. Pet poo, septic tanks, road kill, bird droppings, raccoon and other small wild animal droppings all run off into the waterways every time it rains. Not to mention those who think its ok to dump motor oil or fuel into the storm sewers, hoping it will just disappear.

It all finds its way back to our waterways.

 

[dennismenace111]

Wifey B: Your insult was censored.

Yep... I figured that the BOTs would catch that and block it..

 

[BandB]

They've removed almost all the pumpout stations except for three that I know of.

/QUOTE]

Wifey B: There are only 3 public docks in Fort Lauderdale, 3/3=100%.

I have only been here 7 years so don't know what you've talking about being removed. All the marinas have pump out stations, just not free ones. All three city owned marinas are free.

 

[Gdavid]

I would hope that we can have a civil discussion about this topic without calling each other cheapskates or expletives. While we do use our boats in a variety of different manners and locations, we share more in common with experiences and potentially identifying opportunities of improvement than the general public including the decision makers and/or voters with respect to no-discharge zones.


In some states or municipalities, the installation of pump outs at both municipal facilities and privately owned facilities were funded by grants. Whether the government entity pays to maintain these facilities is unknown to me but I highly doubt it, I believe the marinas maintain them in exchange for the ability to charge for their use.


It is my opinion that the creation of no-discharge zones (prohibited discharge of treated waste) should be aligned with the installation and funded maintenance of pump out facilities. It is a fact that outdated and under capacity sewage treatment plants, farm runoff and domestic lawn overfertilization is the vast contributor to over nitrification of our waters. Boaters are singled out as a easy target of new regulation by politicians looking to claim progress because it is far cheaper to designate a no discharge zone than funding a $100M+ upgrade to the sewage treatment plants which dump undertreated sewage into the environment at every major rain event. Chasing after what boater put into the water is misguided at best, however if it is the collective will of the population, so be it. If a state/county/entity sees fit to create a regulation, there should be a reasonable accommodation for law abiding citizens to comply with it. Relying on private enterprise to provide the service (even at a cost) is shirking the responsibility. In many cases, there is not sufficient return on investment of marinas/fuel piers to maintain the service even with substantial fees. Unless the marina is using the service as a magnet for customers, it ties up valuable dockage frequently at fuel piers where they would be earning more by selling fuel at a faster rate during the height of demand. As a boater who spends a lot of time on the water but only buys relatively small quantities of fuel, I completely understand that a fuel pier would much prefer to sell 100-150 gallons of gas to the go fast day boat who doesn't require water or pump out rather than selling 20-25 gallons of diesel to a trawler, pumping out a holding tank and allowing me to fill my water, so it is naturally a low priority to maintain their pump out equipment. At the same time, it puts many boaters who are trying to follow the rules in a tough situation where the facilities just aren't available within a 20+ mile radius. When you look at it from the perspective of marinas, we are lucky to have as many pump outs as we have, given the average lack of support by the entities creating no-discharge zones.

 

[dhays]

I agree with your post other than this....

It is my opinion that the creation of no-discharge zones (prohibited discharge of treated waste) should be aligned with the installation and funded maintenance of pump out facilities.

Here in Puget Sound, there was a connection made in much of the (mis)information given to the public, WA DOE, and legislators between requesting the EPA for a NDZ and the increase in available pump-out facilities. While I appreciate that there are more, and better serviced pump-outs than there were a couple decades ago, there really is no relation between the two.

The NDZ only affected a very small percentage of recreational boaters in Puget Sound. As such, placing this burden on such a small number of boaters won’t improve water quality. Even so, since the EPA requires evidence that there are adequate pump-out facilities in an area before they approve the NDZ designation, WA state implemented programs and grants to ensure that there would be enough pump-out facilities to satisfy the EPA.

So the EPA agrees with you even though creating an NDZ in Puget Sound puts no significant additional pressure on the pump-out facilities that recreational boaters use.

 

[Gdavid]

I agree with your post other than this....




Here in Puget Sound, there was a connection made in much of the (mis)information given to the public, WA DOE, and legislators between requesting the EPA for a NDZ and the increase in available pump-out facilities. While I appreciate that there are more, and better serviced pump-outs than there were a couple decades ago, there really is no relation between the two.

The NDZ only affected a very small percentage of recreational boaters in Puget Sound. As such, placing this burden on such a small number of boaters won’t improve water quality. Even so, since the EPA requires evidence that there are adequate pump-out facilities in an area before they approve the NDZ designation, WA state implemented programs and grants to ensure that there would be enough pump-out facilities to satisfy the EPA.

So the EPA agrees with you even though creating an NDZ in Puget Sound puts no significant additional pressure on the pump-out facilities that recreational boaters use.

My concern is not just being sufficient pump-outs when NDZ are designated but that the facilities are continually supported. Personally, I think the NDZ are a waste of time but understand the reasons they receive public support.

It is a shame that people cannot be relied upon to both have and exercise good judgement. I will also first consider the Chesapeake Bay because it is my home waters and easiest for me to ponder, but as long as boaters either used pump-outs or restricted their overboard discharge to larger bodies of water with good tidal circulation the whole topic would be a non-issue. I can understand why boaters discharging in harbors and small creeks disgusts people but we should be able to police the bad actors rather than imposing overwhelming restrictions on the entire population (boy this topic sounds familiar). The bad actors will continue their disgusting practices while the responsible boaters are highly inconvenienced for no quantifiable benefit.

 

[wkearney99]

It is a fact that outdated and under capacity sewage treatment plants, farm runoff and domestic lawn overfertilization is the vast contributor to over nitrification of our waters.

Agreed.

And all waste sources need to be addressed. Arguing one is "less" than others doesn't eliminate it from being a problem. I hate how readily arguments devolve into doing nothing because there's somehow, somewhere, something that's "worse"...

 

[dhays]

My concern is not just being sufficient pump-outs when NDZ are designated but that the facilities are continually supported. Personally, I think the NDZ are a waste of time but understand the reasons they receive public support.

Yes, good point. The grants that were made (as you pointed out earlier) helped to install the pump-outs, but what about continued maintenance? The town where I keep my boat has two pump-outs that it maintains in the harbor. It really does a good job of maintaining them as well. I called the town maintenance on a late afternoon on a weekend when the pump-out wasn't working. Someone was paged and down at the dock in about 30 minutes and very happy to do it. Not every town or city is as concerned however.

 

[Gdavid]

Agreed.

And all waste sources need to be addressed. Arguing one is "less" than others doesn't eliminate it from being a problem. I hate how readily arguments devolve into doing nothing because there's somehow, somewhere, something that's "worse"...

It is reasonable and rational to prioritize efforts if you truly want to realize results. It does not mean that you do nothing but that you focus efforts and funding in the most effective direction. Perhaps I am not looking in the right places, but I see and hear very little public discourse on the topic of waste water upgrades.

Fortunately the work is getting done in some places and we should start seeing improvements to the health of the bay due to the DC Water improvements to their combined storm & sanitary system. But Alexandria, Baltimore, Annapolis and many small towns and cities around the bay have a long way to go before we can avoid massive overflows. Frankly I have no idea where to start for farm and domestic runoff aside from development setbacks and buffer zones.

 

[foggysail]

I’ll share my thoughts......as viewed from here in Massachusetts! Yes indeed, NDZs provide some and in my opinion limited benefits in crowded harbors only. Yes, 1000 boats with maybe only 50 in use on some weekends.

But that is not what annoys me, it is the complete banning of waste discharge in large open waters of Buzzard’s Bay, Cape Cod Bay, Vineyard Sound, Nantucket Sound. All this foolishness while we suffer from uncounted but estimated 100K+ seals each of which devour upwards to 15# of fish each day and you know what that produces, cause beaches to close because of the white sharks they attract and nothing is being done to correct the problem. Enough for my rant!

 

[Gdavid]

Agreed.

And all waste sources need to be addressed. Arguing one is "less" than others doesn't eliminate it from being a problem. I hate how readily arguments devolve into doing nothing because there's somehow, somewhere, something that's "worse"...

The NDZ isn't addressing "less" of an issue, they are addressing a non-issue because it is already illegal to discharge untreated waste, the NDZ is just preventing you from discharging treated waste, treated waste isn't an valid concern at all from a health perspective. It is ironic that we are preventing the discharge of treated waste which municipalities regularly discharge untreated (usually partially treated) waste.

 

[dhays]

I’ll share my thoughts......as viewed from here in Massachusetts! Yes indeed, NDZs provide some and in my opinion limited benefits in crowded harbors only. Yes, 1000 boats with maybe only 50 in use on some weekends.

How many of those boats have onboard treatment systems? My issue is that too many folks confuse a NDZ with the requirements not to dump raw sewage within 3 miles of shore. We haven't been able to do that for about as long as I can recall. A NDZ simply prohibits the discharge of of Type 1 and 2 MSDs.



In Puget Sound, there is only one very small spot in Admiralty inlet where you are over 3nm from land. No where else in Puget Sound. So no one has been legally discharging untreated sewage overboard in Puget Sound in decades. So an NDZ for recreational boaters has no effect. I wouldn't mind an NDZ for those very few sensitive locations where the handful of boats that do have onboard treatment devices probably shouldn't discharge. However, I would bet that those boaters don't in those locations anyway.


I think the Puget Sound NDZ should serve as a warning for boaters in other parts of the country.

 

[Max Simmons]

From our observations, a decidedly PNW issue. Elsewhere we've very seldom run into a problem, but saw it regularly at smaller marinas in the PNW.

Is it tied to the low dockage rates in some way? I know those of you there don't think dockage rates are low, but compared to other boating areas they are. Is it not something boaters insist their marina provide?

I sure hope that my $700+ a month for my 40' slip would cover my share of a working pump out unit for me to use 7-10 times a year.

 

[BandB]

I sure hope that my $700+ a month for my 40' slip would cover my share of a working pump out unit for me to use 7-10 times a year.

I was thinking in terms of transients, since that seemed to be the focus of the discussion.

 

[Alaskan Sea-Duction]

Has anyone heard any more information on the Lawsuit against the EPA, State of Washington concerning NDZ?

 

[Gdavid]

essentially wasting a good docking job on nothing!

No such thing a good docking job gone to waste, everyone gets a little sense of gratification when you look and feel like you are one smooth operator.

 

[dhays]

Has anyone heard any more information on the Lawsuit against the EPA, State of Washington concerning NDZ?

Not a thing. I'd be curious.


I also think that it would be a tough one. I don't understand it well, but it appears that the EPA's bar for approval is relatively low. While I wish they had not granted the NDZ, I don't think they were the ones at fault. However, the State of WA did play fast and loose with the numbers as they were trying to get support for the NDZ within the state. I don't know of any legislator who actually understood the issues and the research supporting the request for the NDZ was flawed in my opinion.


In essence, WA said there was a problem with water quality, that sewage was a partial reason for that problem and that therefore an NDZ would be good. I read the report and don't recall anywhere that they actually identified what the effect of the NDZ would be on water quality or how much recreational boaters with treatment systems actually contributed to it.

 

[foggysail]

How many of those boats have onboard treatment systems? My issue is that too many folks confuse a NDZ with the requirements not to dump raw sewage within 3 miles of shore. We haven't been able to do that for about as long as I can recall. A NDZ simply prohibits the discharge of of Type 1 and 2 MSDs.



In Puget Sound, there is only one very small spot in Admiralty inlet where you are over 3nm from land. No where else in Puget Sound. So no one has been legally discharging untreated sewage overboard in Puget Sound in decades. So an NDZ for recreational boaters has no effect. I wouldn't mind an NDZ for those very few sensitive locations where the handful of boats that do have onboard treatment devices probably shouldn't discharge. However, I would bet that those boaters don't in those locations anyway.


I think the Puget Sound NDZ should serve as a warning for boaters in other parts of the country.

My guess? ZERO boats with onboard treatment systems! Why bother??? Even treated waste cannot be legally dumped (BUT OK FOR TOWNS) in Massachusetts waters or I WOULD INSTALL ONE.

 

[emilanderson]

I dont mind paying... but $25 is a bit much especially after 99% of the time I have just paid for moorage and/or fuel. To me $5-10 is good, my frustration is rooted in that I have to carry looneys and tooneys which I never seem to have the right type or quantity of then I have to find a place to get them, ATM then get change... etc etc. Now I typically travel with 4 women do my pumpout situation is a little more frequent. I want to do the right thing and not discharge (and I can say I never have) but there have been a few times I was seriously tempted after telling kids DONT FLUSH!

As for NDZ, it is a bit of a joke here in the PNW... we cant discharge treated waste yet in June? July... it was something like 100,000-200,000 gallons of untreated waste was pumped into the sound! No fines or repercussions as it was the "city" who owns the propblem. It's simply bizarrely political.