Recreational Boating Act of 2007

[S/V Illusion]

Some of you U.S. sailors may want to write in support of this legislation to your representatives in Congress


BoatUS.com: Government Affairs

[S/V Illusion]

apparently, nobody cares...

[Brandywine]

I would not say that BoatUS etc have been pushing this for a few months... I have not seen a status or odds recently.

[stoupidmonkey]

Personally, I dont believe there should be an exemption for recreational vessels. Considering the number of vessels out there, the environmental impact of unregulated discharges could be fairly large. Copper based paints regularly slough off and mix with the substrate of whatever body of water the vessel is located in. We use copper based paints because they deter aquatic and marine organisms from attaching to the boat. The same is likely happening with the sloughed off material found in the sediment, altering the habitat of the benthic invertebrates. Additionally, the EPA (under the Clean Water Act of 1973) is supposed to regulate the discharges from any point source. Any discharging source from a boat that contains chemicals, water from a different body of water, water of a different temperature, etc (by the Clean Water Act) is to be regulated. The problem is that we cannot process or cool our discharges onboard (without processing the discharges with expensive equipment). Regulating to the letter of the law would kill boating in general. I am opposed to regulating point source discharges from recreational boating, as a boater. The issue is that discharging grey water, bilge water, and even cleaning your boat is bad for the water's health. I am an aquatic biologist, so it would be benefitial to have these discharges stop or be regulated heavily. We will see how this issue plays out.

[S/V Illusion]

There are too many people who think this is simply another piece of junk legislation or worse, there are some who think it may have some environmental benefit. Neither is the case. I personally believe passage is a slam-dunk but for some strange unforseeable reason, if it does not pass, we have a real problem far beyond the meager cost of paying for permits.

[sluissa]

I say regulate the bigger problems first. Agricultural runoff, big corporations or even smaller businesses dumping things, raw city sewage and storm drain water being pumped directly into the water. Fix those and then go after the relatively clean boaters if you have to.

[Pblais]

Personally, I don't believe there should be an exemption for recreational vessels.

Given you already have a USCG approved system for handling waste I fail to see the value of requiring a permit. This is a hold over from other legislation that deals with larger commercial vessles and they forgot to exclude the family boat. Local governemnt does not treat sewage as well as this.

[S/V Illusion]

Originally Posted by sluissa

I say regulate the bigger problems first. Agricultural runoff, big corporations or even smaller businesses dumping things, raw city sewage and storm drain water being pumped directly into the water. Fix those and then go after the relatively clean boaters if you have to.

Tell your congressman or senator, not us! We're already in agreement

[David M]

Originally Posted by sluissa

I say regulate the bigger problems first. Agricultural runoff, big corporations or even smaller businesses dumping things, raw city sewage and storm drain water being pumped directly into the water. Fix those and then go after the relatively clean boaters if you have to.

I have to agree sluissa,
During a few major storms last year and the previous year, I was off the San Francisco and EBMUD sewage outfalls taking samples for both of those utilities. I could smell the untreated sewage and see occasional solids up at the surface. At times I was literally floating in raw untreated sewage. I could see it, smell it and see the salinity change on my flow through system (which I subsequently had to shut down). To say the least, it was disgusting. The municipalities are FAR FAR greater polluters than all of the boats combined. They do normally treat their sewage, but during heavy rainfalls their treatment plants are overwhelmed to the point where they are only able to treat the larger solids....the rest goes untreated directly into the SF Bay (primary treatment)...normally there is secondary and tertiary treatment.

The money needs to go to the grossest of the polluters first if you want to effect the greatest bang for the buck.

In the San Joaquin Delta, pesticides and fertilizers are causing trouble for the phytoplankton and zooplankton....negatively affecting the food chain for all life in the SF Bay. And the government is more concerned about the yachties?

Besides, it is already illegal for all boaters to dump their poop in the water...yet these utilities can do the same exact thing but on a much more massive scale with absolutely no ramifications.

Where is the consistency, the logic and the bang for the buck? With the utilities pumping millions of gallons of crap into the SF Bay during each and every major rainfall, how is the licensing of yachties going to make any negligible difference? Take the same money that it is going to take to license, monitor and enforce this ridiculous licensing for boats and apply it towards upgrading the big sewage treatment plants.

[senormechanico]

"Where is the consistency, the logic and the bang for the buck?"

Who needs consistency when you can get political "bang for the buck" by attacking those "rich boaters" in the media?

Steve B.

[Pblais]

And the government is more concerned about the yachties?

It was the least they could do. That is the goal of governement after all.

This is actually a left over from a recent law addressing large commercial ships. They failed to designate which boats in the law it aplies to and so someone filed a court action that basically resulted a ruling that it applies to ALL boats NOW. This new bill fixes that blunder.

If this bill fails we all need discharge permits to drain the sink. I can't sum it up better than that. This is not about boat sewage. It was a law concerning gray water.

This isn't some goofy bill targeting recreational boats that we need to stop. It's already law today and this bill cleans up that legislative pollution. So it cannot get worse because it already is.