New marine sanitation regs included in the Federal Water Pollution Act ("Clean Water Act") of 1978 required that all vessels must begin using holding tanks or USCG certified Type I or II MSDs (treatment devices) on Jan 1, 1980. That deadline was too short to be enforceable for a variety of reasons. Boat builders hated the idea because holding tanks were an added cost that added no increase in value to the boat. They had to begin incorporating space for them and find suppliers. As a result, few if any boat builders began including holding tanks in new boats until at least 1983 or '84. Most importantly, states had to enact legislation to enforce the new requirement, which none did until the late '80s...Georgia was the first to mandate holding tanks in all NEW boats with toilets delivered to inland lakes in 1987 and finally enacted legislation to enforce their use on ALL boats on inland lakes in 1991. So it's not unusual even now to find early-mid '80s boats--especially smaller boats--that have never had a tank installed. If anything, a portapotty may have been included.
Some of the industry's earliest solutions were quite creative...Raritan developed a 5 gallon tank that wrapped around the bowl...Danforth (same company that makes anchors) and couple of other companies created recirculating systems using a small tank directly behind the toilet...I have several more examples somewhere in my old files.
And btw...it was Georgia's law mandating tanks on all NEW boats that accidentally launched my career in marine sanitation. I lived in GA then...my late husband and I bought our first boat big enough to have plumbing at the Atlanta boat show in 1988...the odor out the tank vent every time we flushed the toilet was unbearable...nothing available from boat stores helped, some even made it worse...the odor HAD to go or the boat had to go and I liked the boat. So I began searching outside the marine market for the solution and tripped over a sewage treatment engineer who put me onto a lab that made a live bacteria product he thought should help. They gave me a sample, I tried it...and it WORKED! Our dockmates who had the same problem asked me "what did you do and how do we get some?" When I learned that I could private label it and sell it, I bought a few cases, named it "K.O Kills Odors"...and a small side business was born. When GA began requiring ALL boats to use tanks, my husband suggested I sell tanks too, I jumped on that idea...and the rest is history.
--Peggie
way to make a living..... 