T&T: potti-patrol

[C. Marin Faure]

 >I don't want to argue this point, but it's just puzzling to hear  
otherwise normal sounding people talking about why it's okay to make  
no effort not to add human waste to nearby waters.

So if there are no pumpout facilities  where you boat and your  
holding tank is full, what is your solution?   Have everyone pee and  
poop in trash bags and stow them in the lazarette or forward cabin  
until you get back to port?  Sell the boat and take up knitting  
(which I believe is a non-polluting past-time unless you count the  
effects of fecal runoff from the sheep that supply the wool)?

What's puzzling to me is the all-or-nothing attitude I see  
expressed,  most often from people who do not have to deal with the  
realities that the people they are criticizing have to deal with.   
For the folks who travel up and down the ICW where it sounds like  
there are all sorts of marinas and harbors with facilities, it's a  
relatively easy thing to use a pumpout.  For people in places like  
the PNW where a community is often lucky just to have a dilapidated  
government pier with no facilities at all and most of the time you're  
anchored or moored in undeveloped bays, it's not a question of how  
easy it is to use the pumpouts, it's a question of there not being any.

If someone is too dense to understand the negative ramifications of  
pumping sewage overboard in a small, protected body of water, then it  
takes regulations to try to prevent them from doing this.  Which is  
what BC has been doing in its mostly-remote waters in places like  
Desolation Sound and the other marine parks and harbors.  But as the  
evidence mounts (as posted by several people in this discussion) that  
environmental water problems have many more and greater causes than  
recreational boaters, this whole topic strikes me as making a  
mountain out of a scientific molehill.

On the other hand, the more we talk about dumping crap in the water  
in the PNW the less likely people from the east, Gulf, and SoCal will  
want to come here.  So I guess this would be a good time to report  
that the cities of Blaine, Bellingham, Anacortes, Everett, Seattle,  
and Tacoma, in the face of the crashing economy and anticipated  
state, county, and city deficits next year, have just announced they  
will be operating their sewage treatment facilities only two days a  
week, Mondays and Fridays, starting January 1, 2009.   This is  
expected to reduce the labor and electricity charges by about $550  
million annually.   On the days the facilities are not running, the  
valves will be positioned to let the inflow to the plants bypass the  
treatment systems and go directly to the discharge pipes.  The city  
of Olympia at the south end of the Sound is exempted from this and  
will continue running their facility 24/7/365 because of the  
extremely low water turnover rates in the lower Sound.


____________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington