Raising a stink about sewage disposal

By John Ira Petty - Correspondent

Published January 21, 2007

There's nothing quite like waking up aboard your own sailboat in your marina on a Sunday morning. You've had a good night's sleep after a pleasant Saturday on the bay. You open the hatch, go out to look at the newly risen sun, stretch, take a deep breath and----Phew! You wonder if you've made a wrong turn somewhere and wound up in a sewage plant.

The reason: Too many people at too many marinas are simply pumping holding tanks overboard in their slips, into marina waters. Among them are, alas, sailors. They do so despite our closer connection with the environment than some other recreational boaters. It's hard to say, or even estimate, how many people pump holding tanks overboard in area marinas. Paul Fannin, manager at Maritime Sanitation, said the company's boats pump about 400 holding tanks a month at Clear Lake marinas. That amounts to about 10,000 gallons of sewage.

Maritime Sanitation's base is at Watergate Yachting Center, next to that Marina's own pump-out facility. Based on what Fannin sees there and elsewhere on Clear Lake, he estimates that perhaps another 400 boats a month pump out their holding tanks at marina facilities around the lake.

There are about 6,300 wet slips in marinas and yacht clubs on the lake, according to the just-released 2006 Texas Marina Facilities & Services Directory. That leaves perhaps 5,000-plus boats that don't get monthly pump outs. Granted, not all of them are used enough to need monthly pump outs. But a lot of them are used regularly, and too many of their owners simply pump their holding tanks overboard. Those who do risk a substantial fine. Galveston Bay also is off-limits-- you have to be outside U.S., territorial waters, beyond the 3-mile limit, to legally pump a holding tank overboard.

Dwayne Hollin, who compiles the annual marina directory, is a marine business management specialist with the Sea Grant College Program at Texas A&M University. That organization would like to see that change. So would the Marina Association of Texas, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Perhaps more importantly, so would a lot of sailors and power boaters. Together they're sponsoring a couple of programs that could make a difference. They are the Clean Texas Marina Program and the Clean Texas Boater Program. The marina program helps shore-side facilities protect clean water and air. It gives them resources, including grants to marinas for pump-out stations. The boater program is part of the marina program, recognizing the role boaters play in keeping marinas and waterways clean.

Marinas can get the grants for about 75 percent of the cost of pump-out facilities. They do have to maintain them, though some strike agreements with companies like Maritime Sanitation to maintain the facilities in return for being allowed to use them to dispose of the sewage they collect. Additional pump-out facilities would help. So would stricter enforcement of regulations already on the books. Some aren't enforced at all. But the real answer is in the attitudes of people like us, people who go on the water. It's up to us to help improve the environment that gives us so much. Respecting and protecting the waters on which we sail is in the interest of each of us. John Ira Petty, a sailing instructor and licensed captain, is the sailing columnist for The Daily News.

Reprinted with permission of The Galveston County Daily News.