Crappy news today, Florida Keys Pumpout stops Jan 31

[Philip St1]

Hi

My read was that dumping gray water from 'commercial' vessels is prohibited, not recreational boats. Did I read it wrong?

[donovanjr]

My first time to post. I dream of owning a 30’ to 40’ trawler someday.
For the last 7 years I have been living in various motorhomes and currently in a 28’ 5th wheel, travel trailer.
I have never put anything in my black water tank therefor I never have to empty it.
RV’s have dry toilets as do many boats, so I just put a (wal*mart) plastic bag in the toilet and after defecating I remove the bag, roll it up, place it in a sandwich bag, seal it and throw it in the trash just like one would throw a diaper in the trash. I pee in a large 3 gallon bottle (an empty cat liter bottle) with a large screw off lid. When the pee bottle is full I pour it on the ground (urine is sterile). After empting the pee bottle I pour in a few table spoons of Clorox and it’s ready for use again. To accommodate the ladies I went to the medical supply store and purchased a “specimen” cup, sometimes called a nun’s cap. When placed in the toilet it covers only the front half of the toilet to catch the pee (male or female) and leaves the back half of the toilet open for defecating. I empty my grey water on the ground.
Once you get the hang of it this is a very simple and effective way to solve the problem of what to do with your black water.

[hellosailor]

Illinois...Home of a mythologically mob affiliated Democratic Party tracing their historic partnership back to Prohibition? Yup, spent some time there. Thought the cops were taxi drivers with the uk-style checkered hat bands.(G)


WHen they went to clean up the river some years ago, they found a truckload of voting machines. Old style, with "bingo chips" assuring a real count was still possible. It turns out that those machines literally fell off the books while being taken back to be counted during the 1960 presidential election. IF it had been counted, that district would have given Dick Nixon all of Chicago and Illinois and (are you sitting down?) the US Presidency. That's right, JFK would have lost, but somehow, a truckload of key voting machines fell into the river.
But Chicago was a trading post built in a swamp. After the big fire, they decided that swamp diseases were bad and sanitation was good, so they literally elevated the entire downtown business district about ten feet before rebuilding. And they did it with their own money, same way that Seattle did.
Florida? SE Florida continues to be amazed at how places flood after every high tide or heavy rain, and in Broward it is actually illegal to elevate your property more than four feet above what's now street level. So much for "first, drain the swamp".
I make no bones for being a Yankee. If I had to live there, I'd drain the swamp and pave over the ditches.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by pete33458

What's the best anchor to use when using a formerly free pump-out station?

pete

An old crappy one of course!

[letsgetsailing3]

Originally Posted by donovanjr

My first time to post. I dream of owning a 30’ to 40’ trawler someday.
For the last 7 years I have been living in various motorhomes and currently in a 28’ 5th wheel, travel trailer.
I have never put anything in my black water tank therefor I never have to empty it.
RV’s have dry toilets as do many boats, so I just put a (wal*mart) plastic bag in the toilet and after defecating I remove the bag, roll it up, place it in a sandwich bag, seal it and throw it in the trash just like one would throw a diaper in the trash. I pee in a large 3 gallon bottle (an empty cat liter bottle) with a large screw off lid. When the pee bottle is full I pour it on the ground (urine is sterile). After empting the pee bottle I pour in a few table spoons of Clorox and it’s ready for use again. To accommodate the ladies I went to the medical supply store and purchased a “specimen” cup, sometimes called a nun’s cap. When placed in the toilet it covers only the front half of the toilet to catch the pee (male or female) and leaves the back half of the toilet open for defecating. I empty my grey water on the ground.
Once you get the hang of it this is a very simple and effective way to solve the problem of what to do with your black water.

You realize you're putting biodegradable waste inside plastic, so it can't recycle into the environment, right? (You and about 95% of dog owners...)

I'll applaud your approach if you go the extra mile and use biodegradable bags.

Because of the plastic and the inconvenience of having to take the waste somewhere, however, it won't really work as well for boat owners.

[donovanjr]

Thanks for your post. All boat owners sooner or later have to "take out the trash".
Where would I obtain biodegradable bags? I would be happy to use them. I have been using plastic bags because they contain the odors.
I suppose I could use an air-tight container to store the used bags in until I am ready to take the trash out.

[letsgetsailing3]

Google is your friend.

By the way, welcome to the (crappy) forum. It's generally a great resource.

[Neeltje]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Florida? SE Florida continues to be amazed at how places flood after every high tide or heavy rain, and in Broward it is actually illegal to elevate your property more than four feet above what's now street level. So much for "first, drain the swamp".
I make no bones for being a Yankee. If I had to live there, I'd drain the swamp and pave over the ditches.

I'll bet you would...

Jacques

[zboss]

It comes down to this for my wife and I... we are cruisers and we also like to swim. If you want to charge me $10 to pump put my tank and make it mandatory that I present evidence that I have done so then great... do IT! I like clean water.

BTW - we just arrived here in Key West. I noticed a considerable change in attitude towards cruisers and sailors the further south we went from St. Augustine. We got to Key West and I can see why... there are a lot of problems here.

Lets start with the City Marina, which is supposed to solve some of these issues. I noticed at least three sunken dinghies. If the city can't manage to handle three sunken dinghies on their dock in front of their office, how are they going to effectively manage waste disposal policy?

[Neeltje]

Originally Posted by letsgetsailing3

You realize you're putting biodegradable waste inside plastic, so it can't recycle into the environment, right? (You and about 95% of dog owners...)

I'll applaud your approach if you go the extra mile and use biodegradable bags.

Because of the plastic and the inconvenience of having to take the waste somewhere, however, it won't really work as well for boat owners.

All good points.

I've got a C-1 macerator that eats close to 2 pounds of salt a week with 2 or 3 people flushing, and I begin to wonder just how "environmentally friendly" it actually is, especially now that we're in a fresh water environment.

[rwidman]

Originally Posted by fstbttms

Umm... where do you think the vast majority of the CVA grant fund funds have gone since the law was passed? To the installation of shoreside pumpout stations. You act like these don't exist.

I'm not acting at all, just trying to answer questions based on what I know.

[Dulcesuenos]

New update, funding extended to March 31 now,

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Gone2long]

Originally Posted by rwidman

Of course it doesn't but faced with a $20 charge (plus tip) to discharge twenty gallons of sewage, many boaters will simply wait for nightfall and take care of it themselves.

My suggestion though was to install self service pumpout stations on land, connected to city sewer systems. On marina or public docks. No attendant, only equipment and maintenance costs. I remember one at Sandy Point State Park just off the Chesapeake Bay in MD.

Nice idea. State floats a bond to pay for it. Job gets done, investors make 4%, good in this economy, and everybody is happy : )

[Gone2long]

Originally Posted by Dulcesuenos

New update, funding extended to March 31 now,

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

So the state legislators were bluffing in the middle of budget negotiations, but had no intent of letting their yachts go un-serviced? : (

Or did one of you guys start a letter writing campaign? : )

Whatever the case, we cruisers piggy back on the results.

In fact, my understanding is that cruising actually is free (and, at least temporarily legal) as long as one dumps a mile or so off shore.


Boat maintenance, on the other hand, is nothing like free. : )

G2L

[Group9]

Originally Posted by DumnMad

Perhaps they discovered that a small quantity of macerated stuff pumped fresh into the seawater is healthier for the environment that sending it through the sewerage system.

My ex-wife used to be on the water quality commission board on our sea coast town. What I learned from that, is that all it took, was one sewage treatment station failure incident (and they happened on a reguar basis) for a community to dump more raw untreated sewage into the ocean in one day, than recreational boaters could put there in ten years. And, usually, when it happened, it would be reported in a single column, one inch announcement, on page seventeen of the paper. And, often, all it would take, would be a power failure, or a really heavy rain. It was a given every time we had a tropical storm that it would happen.

You couldn't make her swim off of the beach, anywhere, after being on that commission and she would constantly say that anyone who had learned what she had, would not swim in it either. And, it would usually take about a week for the ocean to clean itself (from e. coli counts, it happened so often, that the county had a boat set up for taking these readings on a full time basis, and often, the boat would be the way they had discovered an incident even happened) after one of these incidents.

I don't believe recreational boats should dump raw sewage inside the prohibited limits, but I don't think it makes much of a real difference when someone does any more. It's more of the principal of the thing than a real problem. Remember, the vast majority of the boats out on the water don't even have heads in them. But, they all have people in them.

A lot of these pump out stations were built for the same reason that about 90 per cent of local city and county construction gets done. Contractors search out and find federal construction grants, including pump out construction, and take packages to the local government, showing how they can build these grant subsidized projects for the community at very small costs (again, personal family experience, my brother in law, a civil engineer, works for a very large firm, and his only job is to take these packages to local governments and market them to them. His company has provided a lot of this stuff, including pump out facilities and other harbor improvements, this very way). It's amazing to me how many times, these local governments decide they have a problem, because someone wanting to make some money tells them they have a problem and a grant to fix it.

No doubt there is some benefit to the environment from pump out facilities and services. But, that's rarely the reason theses systems actually get built, installed, or purchased. Most of the times, the money would be much better spent on trying to improve the land sewage treatment systems. Hey, but that's government.