Seattle Waste Spill

The friendliest place on the web for anyone who enjoys boating.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Here we go again. Almost certainly a single spill "event" that exceeds all the actual and potential discharge from little recreational boats for a decade. Or more. Heck, this spill probably included boat pump-out contents. Oops.
 
kthoennes said:
Here we go again. Almost certainly a single spill "event" that exceeds all the actual and potential discharge from little recreational boats for a decade. Or more. Heck, this spill probably included boat pump-out contents. Oops.
Click to expand...

What's the connection between recreational boat discharge and a sewage plant malfunction ?
 
Benthic2 said:
What's the connection between recreational boat discharge and a sewage plant malfunction ?
Click to expand...

We get a ton of crap from the greenies as we are all wealthy capitalist environmental terrorists for pumping a few marine toilets while The city of socialism.. oops I meant Seattle can dump millions of raw sewage a number of times a year and nobody gets their hemp panties in a knot.

Bittersweet irony is the connection

Hollywood
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yep, what Hollywood said. I know a million threads have beaten this to death, but it's so annoying and irrational that it keeps coming up. Regulations and legislatures treat recreational boat black water like plutonium, and meanwhile large scale operations spill millions of gallons every year and those same regulators just shrug. Only boaters would google this, but okay there it is -- looks like a single "discharge" from one whale is about 50 gallons, bigger than my 40-gallon holding tank. Okay, that's a blue whale, probably not a fair comparison. Even here, the city of Sioux Falls purposely pumped over a million gallons of sewage into the Big Sioux River in 2010 -- which despite its name is not big at all, it's knee deep in most places -- and that's just one discharge. Meanwhile they nag the residents about lawn fertilizer runoff and car wash soap in the storm drain system.
 
Telling people not to dump stuff is cheap. Fixing the big sources is expensive, so it's not too surprising that they go for the cheap option first.
 
I think the city's discharges are accidental. For this analogy to be correct it would have to compare how a recreational boater is treated if they have an accidental discharge. To just say the government did it, so we can do it is crazy. The government killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in WWII........by your reasoning now you should be able to kill a few here and there ?
 
"Millions of gallons of wastewater have been spilled at the West Point Treatment Plant over the years, leading the Suquamish Tribe to threaten a lawsuit against King County for allegedly violating clean water laws."

When the sewage plants dump sewage (even deliberately) it is only an alleged violation, but when boaters do so accidently, it is an actual violation.
 
Benthic2 said:
I think the city's discharges are accidental. For this analogy to be correct it would have to compare how a recreational boater is treated if they have an accidental discharge. To just say the government did it, so we can do it is crazy. The government killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in WWII........by your reasoning now you should be able to kill a few here and there ?
Click to expand...
Yeah, so what is your point!! :dance:
I guess I am just in "one of those moods today". :angel:
In seriousness, I think the main "upset" for boaters is the fact that regularly the Government officials (both Countries) look for new regulations to put in place for "boater discharges", no matter how practical, expensive, or even sometimes next to impossible for boaters to follow, while Government run treatment plants and other Industries continue to have regular "accidents" that make boater discharges pale in comparison. That is to say nothing about all of the runoff from the land like farms, industrial sites, roads, etc. that actually make up the "lion's share" of the water pollution. They seem to take a "let's regulate the 0.001% of the problem (after all like Hollywood said all boaters are rich) and ignore 80% of the problem because it might not be popular or it might be expensive to fix.
Again, sometimes common sense is not common in the Governments. :dance:
 
kthoennes said:
-- looks like a single "discharge" from one whale is about 50 gallons, bigger than my 40-gallon holding tank.
Click to expand...

What is it's alternative other than to discharge it into the ocean?

However, I fully agree that boaters are too easy a target.
 
firehoser75 said:
...... and ignore 80% of the problem because it might not be popular or it might be expensive ....
Click to expand...


From Kingcounty.gov:

"The King County Council on Tuesday approved a $65 million funding package to make critical upgrades to the West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant to prevent future bypass of untreated wastewater."

That hardly seems like they are ignoring it.
 
Benthic2 said:
I think the city's discharges are accidental. For this analogy to be correct it would have to compare how a recreational boater is treated if they have an accidental discharge. To just say the government did it, so we can do it is crazy. The government killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in WWII........by your reasoning now you should be able to kill a few here and there ?
Click to expand...



I think it’s about asking the cities to live up to the same standards as boaters are.
 
Greetings,
Like everything else, treatment plants work well, until they don't. The unfortunate part is, for whatever reason, most municipalities are reactive instead of being proactive.

If the upgrades necessary for the West Point facility are "critical", why wasn't that $65M allocated 3 or 4 years ago?
 
"That hardly seems like they are ignoring it."
So "upgrades" are needed to prevent "accidental" discharges that have occurred several times in the past and they are "just getting to those now"? Like RTF says, sounds "proactive" to me. :)

The ignoring I was actually talking about has nothing to do with this plant, but has everything to do with the largest sources of water pollution like farm runoff (fertilizer residue), roadway runoff, etc. etc. etc. They account for the majority of the problem, not boaters!
 
"Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform"
 
So what's the alternative ?

Potty train the whales ?
Shut down the farms ?
Let boaters pump their crap overboard whenever and where ever they want ?
 
I'm pretty sure nobody is arguing for
"Let boaters pump their crap overboard whenever and where ever they want ?"
That is a distortion and exaggeration of the argument others are making in order to make your own stance/the city or state's stance appear more reasonable. The alternative would be to have the same rules governing discharges as the rest of the country. Or at the very least allow for treated waste (ie an approved marine sanitation device) to be discharged.
 
Agree with completely let boaters discharge treated waste. I have a Lectrasan and it works fine. Where I boat in Chesapeake Bay, we can do that. The farms around the bay discharge a million fold the amount all the potential boaters ever could. Peggy said a Lectrasna nutrient value discharge is same as a couple of oak leaves.

WHERE is the common sense... get the political emotions of politicians manipulating the facts out of boat waste.
 
For as many boaters that go "eewwww" and wrinkle their noses at getting their hands dirty fixing their head systems or singing the praises of composting heads, AND not really understanding the type I and II MSD argument....

Not sure even most boaters can get behind the NDZ creep argument.
 
So frustrating... i don’t dump my poop in the Puget Sound
 
sdowney717 said:
Agree with completely let boaters discharge treated waste. I have a Lectrasan and it works fine. Where I boat in Chesapeake Bay, we can do that. The farms around the bay discharge a million fold the amount all the potential boaters ever could. Peggy said a Lectrasna nutrient value discharge is same as a couple of oak leaves.

WHERE is the common sense... get the political emotions of politicians manipulating the facts out of boat waste.
Click to expand...


Good news is the puget sound NDZ including prohibition of treated waste is being challenged.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/productio...e_american_waterways_operators_12.13.2018.pdf
 
The point really is boaters are easy targets and everyone nods their heads and agrees that it's good we use holding tanks, etc., but it's all really BS in the end
 
I agree that it is very difficult to accept and in fact, an intolerable situation. But we, as boaters, need to take the high road. Instead of saying "If Seattle can do it, so can I". We need to take the stand that says "Think of how much worse the water would be if boaters were discharging waste in the water."

I guess it is bad enough that whales and seagulls do it. I am proud to say that I do not.

pete
 
It's like a city that has a record amount of murders, but responds, "That may be true, but illegal parking offenses are down 22 per cent for the same period. Yes, murders are bad, but so is illegal parking. If we shift all of our resources to try and stop the murders, who is going to stop the illegal parking?"
 
Well it wouldn't be any worse as long as discharges don't happen in crowded harbors.
Pete Meisinger said:
I agree that it is very difficult to accept and in fact, an intolerable situation. But we, as boaters, need to take the high road. Instead of saying "If Seattle can do it, so can I". We need to take the stand that says "Think of how much worse the water would be if boaters were discharging waste in the water."

I guess it is bad enough that whales and seagulls do it. I am proud to say that I do not.

pete
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

slowgoesit
Another raw sewage spill
Replies
8
Views
1K
Group9
G
H
Flooding Implications for Boating?
Replies
28
Views
2K
MVDarlin
M
R
Battery Combiner Help/ Advice
Replies
7
Views
1K
RyanZ
R
mvweebles
Weebles heads to Mazatlán
Replies
29
Views
3K
Fletcher500
Fletcher500
J
Current Predictions
Replies
9
Views
1K
Hippocampus
H

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom