A Boeing guy took me out on his Catalina 40 when I was in Long Beach. I took him out when he came here. Like John said more than enough folks here would take you for a ride
It's official. Puget Sound boaters are full of it
- Thread starter Justin_NSA
- Start date
jssailem
SBO Weather and Forecasting Forum Jim & John
- Oct 22, 2014
- 22,825
You're confusing "can't flush the toilet directly overboard" with "no discharge." Yes, it's been illegal to flush raw sewage directly from the toilet or dump a tank in the Bay for more than 20 years. But there's only one NO discharge zone in the entire Chesapeake Bay, and it's a small one: Herring Bay. The discharge of TREATED wasted from a USCG certified Type I or II MSD is legal everywhere else, even in Annapolis Harbor.
It's been illegal to dump RAW waste in Puget Sound--in all US waters--for at least 20 years too...federal regulations require all boats in navigable waters (waterways with access to open sea) to hold or treat toilet waste. Due to cost and power requirements, only about 5% of boats have treatment devices...the remaining 95% should already have--and be using--holding tanks. Which means that making Puget Sound an NDZ accomplishes exactly NOTHING of any real value to the environment.
--Peggie
Yeah wrong Peggy. The Chesapeake has 3 No Discharge Zones, Lynnhaven Bay, Fishing Bay and Herring Bay. And by the way, Annapolis is in the process of applying to have all county waters declared no discharge zones. And the entire back-bay of Ocean City, MD is a NDZ too.
Gunni, I recently heard on the news that Anne Arundel County ( is Annapolis-area county) was to be a no-discharge zone.
Fishing Bay is at Deltaville VA, at the mouth of the Bay...neither Lynnhaven nor Ocean City are anywhere near the Bay. Lynnhaven is a river near Virginia Beach and Ocean City is on the Atlantic side of the Eastern Shore of MD. Check the EPA list...they keep it up to date: EPA NDZ list
--Peggie
--Peggie
And, when I cross into BC waters, the valves are switched. The south end of Vancouver Is dumps all its raw sewage directly into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Has been for decades. We get burdened by all these rules and BC just continues to dump..So, my little dump is very very insignificant. BC has very few pumpout stations and they might work..I dont go days out of my way to find out. What about all the farm waste that hits the streams and drain into “you know where”...Well this old stuff. Rant over
Let’s talk about something you know about - potties. Arguably three major centers of recreational boating in the Chesapeake are Annapolis/Herring Bay (Anne Arundel Co), Deltaville and Lynnhaven Bay. How many people do you think are buying discharging heads in the Bay, knowing they will have to also install a holding tank if they want to enter those waters? Bonus question: Given the trend in waste discharge regs what kind of MSD would you recommend that a Bay boater install in their boat?
jssailem
SBO Weather and Forecasting Forum Jim & John
- Oct 22, 2014
- 22,825
I’m sorry Mark. No slight was intended. By all means if @Justin_NSA comes out you are most welcome in the flotilla of boats offering rides. We can do a sign up, Of all interested in sharing our sailing area with SBO members.
That would be a cool idea. We're headed for Destin FL for two weeks with my sis-in-law and her husband at the end of the month. Already looking into a day sail with a captain and his wife on a catamaran. Trouble is I can't contact them directly. It goes thru a booking site. I guess we just show up at the scheduled time.
Ive swam and sailed in kansas. Places like milford, tuttle creek, lake olathe, Shawnee mission.I know Kansas is lacking in good sailing places. But we have excellent wind and a great membership.
And living in Kansas is much cheaper so we can afford to visit nice places.
No one discharges here that I know of. We take it all back to the pumping station. Unless it's dark and we use the stern
Geese are the enemy. But if we could get the farmers and cows not to discharge that would be awesome too. Then residental lawncare run off, etc. Every bit helps.
Every marine toilet that isn't a portapotty or a composter is a "discharging head" that can be plumbed to discharge directly overboard, into a tank, or through a treatment device (Type I or II MSD). Everyone who has a treatment device also has at least a small holding tank for use when visiting an NDZ. As for what I'd recommend, that depends on a number of factors including the size of the boat and the owners budget and where the boat is likely to spend most of its time.
As for how many people would install a treatment device...as I said in my first post, only about 5% of boats have treatment devices because of the cost ($1000+) and power requirements. So you're unlikely to find one on a boat much smaller than 30'.
All inland waters except navigable interstate waterways (river system) are NDZs, so you won't find any treatment devices on inland lakes or inTRA state rivers. New England is "hotbed" of NDZs...not much opportunity to use a treatment device. The discharge of treated waste is legal in LIS, but all the harbors on it are NDZs, so whether to invest a $,1000+ in a treatment device in addition to a tank may not make sense. With only one NDZ on the Cheseapeake (you can include VA coastal waters starting at Deltaville if you want to, but that's a stretch and Lynnville Bay isn't anywhere near the Chesapeake Bay), a treatment device makes sense on boats big enough with owners who can afford one. South of NC, treatment is legal all the way to the Keys except for a few well-meaning but misguided marinas who think they're "doing the right thing" by requiring boats to hold while there. On the west coast, holding is required in most of SoCal waters, but the only NDZ between Santa Barbara and Puget Sound is Richardson Bay, a small harbor off SF Bay, making treatment an excellent option on boats big enough to support one.
I dunno what you're trying to prove, Gunni, but I suggest you invest some time in learning a lot more about marine sanitation systems and the laws that govern 'em than you obviously know now.
--Peggie
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't completely understand it yourself." --Albert Einstein
So Peggy, as someone who was born on the Chesapeake and has boated there all my life I’ll explain how things are unfolding with marine waste discharge regulation and what it means for people selling and promoting pottie hardware. Recreational boaters are not buying and installing treating potties. They used too, but with treated discharge becoming non-compliant in the NDZ’s the demand died. You plumb in a holding tank and you use a pump out. Done. What is happening in Puget Sound is what we will see in more and more US waters - no discharge zones will become common everywhere. North Carolina seems intent to fill their bays with pig sh*t, so they are playing catch up.
In the Chesapeake we are in process to re-establish water quality in the creeks and side bays that support the shellfish industry. As oyster bars and clam beds are rebuilt the localities are moving to protect that investment and banning any of these treated discharge gizmos in those waters. You can still come up the main stem of the Ches with your discharging treated pottie, but you will find fewer and fewer places you can anchor or dock. If you live here, the cost/benefit of an expensive treated discharge pottie doesn’t work and so they are being removed and replaced with simple holding tanks with provision for off-shore discharge in the open ocean.
In the Chesapeake we are in process to re-establish water quality in the creeks and side bays that support the shellfish industry. As oyster bars and clam beds are rebuilt the localities are moving to protect that investment and banning any of these treated discharge gizmos in those waters. You can still come up the main stem of the Ches with your discharging treated pottie, but you will find fewer and fewer places you can anchor or dock. If you live here, the cost/benefit of an expensive treated discharge pottie doesn’t work and so they are being removed and replaced with simple holding tanks with provision for off-shore discharge in the open ocean.
This is the KEY point to remember.
Dumping raw is obviously a bad idea, but why are Type 1 and 2 MSDs considered an issue at all ?
Municipality treatment systems seem lacking in many jurisdictions from what I've read (and seen first hand)
Then when you add the cumulative environmental costs of manufacturing, installing, maintaining, and using pump-out stations.. are pump-outs really better ?
It almost seems like a money grab, of the type that occurs in many industries.
1) Start a committee that includes a bunch of industry people with vested interests.
2) Have them make up a standard, that makes them more money, has a feel good factor, but has much less actual (environmental) benefit.
3) Convince each place that doesn't meet that standard they should do the right thing.
4) Profit
It almost smells like the BS to try to make me replace my 1972 washing machine. I use environmentally friendly soap, power is from hydro electric, and the environmental expense of manufacturing the machine is now spread over almost 50 years. Seems good to me.
So we convince people to buy "low water use" machines that, by design, need to be replaced every 5-6 years, with the resulting high environmental costs from manufacturing, and distribution, which include polluting water with stuff that is VERY damaging.
Municipality treatment systems seem lacking in many jurisdictions from what I've read (and seen first hand)
Then when you add the cumulative environmental costs of manufacturing, installing, maintaining, and using pump-out stations.. are pump-outs really better ?
It almost seems like a money grab, of the type that occurs in many industries.
1) Start a committee that includes a bunch of industry people with vested interests.
2) Have them make up a standard, that makes them more money, has a feel good factor, but has much less actual (environmental) benefit.
3) Convince each place that doesn't meet that standard they should do the right thing.
4) Profit
It almost smells like the BS to try to make me replace my 1972 washing machine. I use environmentally friendly soap, power is from hydro electric, and the environmental expense of manufacturing the machine is now spread over almost 50 years. Seems good to me.
So we convince people to buy "low water use" machines that, by design, need to be replaced every 5-6 years, with the resulting high environmental costs from manufacturing, and distribution, which include polluting water with stuff that is VERY damaging.
Because they rely on a competent operator to prevent them from dumping raw waste, AND they don’t remove the waste nutrients which are harmful to water quality.
These forums are full of comments from folks who can’t figure out how to properly operate or maintain a head that does nothing more than pump waste from a bowl into a holding tank. They surely couldn’t capably operate a marine waste treatment system.
Part of the approval process for NDZ designation is proof that enough marine pump out stations exist to service the boater load. Obviously Washington demonstrated that goal. So now the boater waste will go to a wastewater treatment plant operated by law by a trained and licensed operator who does know how to meet legal discharge standards - including nutrients and bacteria.
Hehe. You are likely correct there.
What are the treatment plants like in Puget Sound ?
From my previous business I personally know of a few municipalities that occasionally exceed their discharge standards, due to system failure, antiquated design, lack of funding, and incompetence. All by trained & licensed staff. Due to the size of a municipal plant, those discharges are high volumes.
For example: where I currently live, 49 million us gal of raw sewage got into the rivers that run our city, since 2004, even though we have treatment plants.
All the boat direct discharge, and badly operated MSDs that have been in this province, combined, wouldn't come close to that figure.
They have cars that help bad drivers so, hopefully someone can come up with an automatic treatment system for boats, that meets the standard.
Does the approval process cover current and projected treatment capacity, and not just number of pump out facilities ?
Worst case example: While it has been reported that "plans" are in the works….Lower Vancouver Island, just across from Puget Sound, treats none of it's sewage.
When I lived there, they were at the initial stages of putting a system into Maple Bay, for both pumpout and dedicated systems for each liveaboard slip.
So they pumped it out… and it just ended up being pumped into the sea further south, with no treatment.
Even if we have competently run pumpouts and treatment systems, and even control the price to prevent gouging… My cynical side says such a LARGE NDZ is a bit of wishful thinking.
"hmmm. The tank is full. It's 10pm and it's too far to get to the pumpout. Those jerks charge too much IMO. They have tripled the price since 2019… So i'll just unlock and turn the y valve…. have a poo… and turn it back and put the padlock back on"
Heck, there' an idiot with a youtube video that was installing a large PVC pipe that holds a couple flushes worth, so he can supposedly fulfil the holding tank requirements, while not actually doing what is intended.
He confidently states that every cruiser he knows breaks the rules.
Those should be in the minority.
Hopefully it works as planned, and boaters don't get gouged.
As population increases the treatment standards will need to be improved. The real cause of all these issues is too many people, but that's another topic.
Ok my curiousity got the better of me, and I did some web searching.
With interesting and disturbing results.
-------
Feb 2017
Millions of gallons of untreated wastewater and stormwater began dumping into Puget Sound Thursday after high tides and heavy rains overwhelmed a King County wastewater-treatment center in Seattle.
King County has dumped an estimated 235 million gallons of untreated wastewater — including 30 million gallons of raw sewage and hundreds of tons of partially treated solids — into Puget Sound because of the damage to the plant.
“The Seattle Times, through interviews and reviewing more than 7,000 documents, found errors in judgment, poor communication, a lack of training, equipment failures and faulty maintenance led to the disastrous flood at West Point Treatment Plant on February 9,”
July 2017
The city will have to pay up for allowing nearly 300,000 gallons of untreated sewage to flow into Lake Washington in the Madison Park area. Malfunctions in the pump station alarm and overflow notification system in April allowed the sewage to stream into the lake for 74 hours before the problem was detected and fixed.
Oct 2016
According to Monica Van der Vieren with King County, there were two such overflows into Elliott Bay on the day the video was taken. The video — taken around 4:15 p.m. — was likely of treated sewage and stormwater. However, shortly after, an untreated sewage overflow was released at the exact same spot.
Seattle’s sewer and stormwater systems were designed for a much smaller city decades ago. Back then, engineers designed a system that moved sewage water and the street runoff into the same pipes. Those pipes are still there and lead to wastewater treatment plants. But it rains in Seattle — a lot. And those pipes can only hold so much. So when heavy rain hits, the pipes overflow into the nearest body of water — Elliott Bay, Lake Union, or Lake Washington.
Sept 2012 - Post Construction Monitoring Plan for King County CSO Controls
King County’s wastewater collection and treatment system currently has 38 combined sewer overflow (CSO) locations and 4 CSO treatment plants. Their outfalls discharge to Lake Washington, Lake Union, Lake Washington Ship Canal, Duwamish River, Elliott Bay, and Puget Sound. The county is working toward controlling all its CSO locations by 2030 to meet the Washington State standard of no more than one untreated overflow on average per year at each location.
———————
Ok.. looks like Seattle has the same antiquated combined rain/sewer system design we have in my city…
Gonna love the trained and licenced professionals, when a single event likely pollutes more than all the boater incidents over a period of years
By 2030 king county plans to meet a standard of one untreated overflow on average per year at each location ??
So, how many gallons is one untreated overflow ? 300,000 gallons like in 2007 ? 237 million gallons like in Feb 2017 ?
One of those allowed at each of the 38 locations ?
What about all the other counties in the Puget Sound area ?
Is the large NDZ just political PR ? Who knows.
I personally figure that it's well intentioned, but the reality will be that the increased load on the evidently inadequate plants, with occasional inadequately trained staff, will result in a lot of effort to solve a comparatively smaller problem, that would better be simply put into the bigger problem of sewers and plants treating municipal sewage.
With interesting and disturbing results.
-------
Feb 2017
Millions of gallons of untreated wastewater and stormwater began dumping into Puget Sound Thursday after high tides and heavy rains overwhelmed a King County wastewater-treatment center in Seattle.
King County has dumped an estimated 235 million gallons of untreated wastewater — including 30 million gallons of raw sewage and hundreds of tons of partially treated solids — into Puget Sound because of the damage to the plant.
“The Seattle Times, through interviews and reviewing more than 7,000 documents, found errors in judgment, poor communication, a lack of training, equipment failures and faulty maintenance led to the disastrous flood at West Point Treatment Plant on February 9,”
July 2017
The city will have to pay up for allowing nearly 300,000 gallons of untreated sewage to flow into Lake Washington in the Madison Park area. Malfunctions in the pump station alarm and overflow notification system in April allowed the sewage to stream into the lake for 74 hours before the problem was detected and fixed.
Oct 2016
According to Monica Van der Vieren with King County, there were two such overflows into Elliott Bay on the day the video was taken. The video — taken around 4:15 p.m. — was likely of treated sewage and stormwater. However, shortly after, an untreated sewage overflow was released at the exact same spot.
Seattle’s sewer and stormwater systems were designed for a much smaller city decades ago. Back then, engineers designed a system that moved sewage water and the street runoff into the same pipes. Those pipes are still there and lead to wastewater treatment plants. But it rains in Seattle — a lot. And those pipes can only hold so much. So when heavy rain hits, the pipes overflow into the nearest body of water — Elliott Bay, Lake Union, or Lake Washington.
Sept 2012 - Post Construction Monitoring Plan for King County CSO Controls
King County’s wastewater collection and treatment system currently has 38 combined sewer overflow (CSO) locations and 4 CSO treatment plants. Their outfalls discharge to Lake Washington, Lake Union, Lake Washington Ship Canal, Duwamish River, Elliott Bay, and Puget Sound. The county is working toward controlling all its CSO locations by 2030 to meet the Washington State standard of no more than one untreated overflow on average per year at each location.
———————
Ok.. looks like Seattle has the same antiquated combined rain/sewer system design we have in my city…
Gonna love the trained and licenced professionals, when a single event likely pollutes more than all the boater incidents over a period of years
By 2030 king county plans to meet a standard of one untreated overflow on average per year at each location ??
So, how many gallons is one untreated overflow ? 300,000 gallons like in 2007 ? 237 million gallons like in Feb 2017 ?
One of those allowed at each of the 38 locations ?
What about all the other counties in the Puget Sound area ?
Is the large NDZ just political PR ? Who knows.
I personally figure that it's well intentioned, but the reality will be that the increased load on the evidently inadequate plants, with occasional inadequately trained staff, will result in a lot of effort to solve a comparatively smaller problem, that would better be simply put into the bigger problem of sewers and plants treating municipal sewage.
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