THE Enviromental Thread

[artbyjody]

Awhile ago I was chided on the Global Warming thread for stating several viewpoints..and now we have the discussion on the great floating garbage dump in the Pacific, so - we now have a environmental thread where we can state opinions, facts, and maybe resolutions to such matters that effect us.

Lets just try to keep it from getting crimp or overly solar Will follow up with additional post(s) later but you folks know what to do...

Ideas:

Waterway conditions where you are at
Regulations now being enacted in your area
Impact that you see environmentally currently

But do try to stay on topic so Chuckles Avatar is off base for this one

[xort]

I'm for the Ted Kennedy environmental policy...environmental restrictions are good, for everybody but me

[Alden68]

Originally Posted by xort

I'm for the Ted Kennedy environmental policy...environmental restrictions are good, for everybody but me

Oh come on....a stronger guardrail and he could have been president

[Alden68]

I was amazed when I was in BVI that there were no provisions for managing holding tank waste. Our charter co. told us that there were too many boats down there generating too much waste....what could they possibly do with it all? So the standard SOP is to let it go st.thru the tank into the water. Wether you are in harbor or not.

I imagine a lot of cruising grounds abroad are similiar. Seemed pretty archaic to me.

[chucklesR]

Originally Posted by Alden68

I was amazed when I was in BVI that there were no provisions for managing holding tank waste. Our charter co. told us that there were too many boats down there generating too much waste....what could they possibly do with it all? So the standard SOP is to let it go st.thru the tank into the water. Wether you are in harbor or not.

I imagine a lot of cruising grounds abroad are similiar. Seemed pretty archaic to me.

And yet I caught crap when I said I don't swim with fish. It's because it's not just fish. It's fish food (and okay, I might become fish food).

[sailingdog]

The river I keep my boat on is a basically an EPA Superfund site... so dredging is basically impossible... and the river gets shallower and shallower. There are a couple of berths in my marina where my boat is grounded at low tide—I have a 15" draft...

[sailaway21]

Not impossible, Dog. Just very, very expensive. Which I think was probably your point. They're dredging and removing some old damns on the Kalamazoo River near me. There are PBC's in the sediment. The issue of course is what to do with the sediment.

In practise, what happens is that these things are trucked to a landfill, once an acceptable site can be found. What that tends to do is to concentrate them and magnify any problem they can cause if there is leakage. There are solutions, such as incineration, but the costs and conflicts are high. Ultimately though, once again, the solution is dilution. Were they not diluted and thus less harmful, while on the river bottom, we'd have had them out of there long ago.

Eventually, they'll probably dredge your river and remove them. The concern is that in doing so they stir everything up and down stream it goes. Once again though the solution is dilution and the effects will probably be transitory. It doesn't help that there is thirty additional years of sediment on top of them which must be removed and is considered hazardous waste as well.

[erps]

The State Jody and I live in (Washington) is officially going green. Recent legislation will:

Requires quantifiable reductions in greenhouse gas pollution, requires a comprehensive plan by year’s end to achieve the required reductions, and makes it possible to measure progress by requiring the largest greenhouse gas polluters to count and report their emissions beginning in 2010.

Governor Chris Gregoire | News Releases

[bob chaisson]

In RI they started requiring inspections to make sure your thru hull is locked off and they just finished putting in mandated town sewerage around the cove I'm in. You could see the difference right away and now a year later it's an amazing improvement. Heck at this rate, one might just be able to swim in it in a few years. SUPER

Bob C s/v Valkyrie, 1988 Irwin Citation 35.5

[sailaway21]

I'd think that the responsible individual boater, when confronted with a situation like the BVI, would make sure to pump out well offshore. Discharging into the harbor makes no sense. Of course, most of our storm sewers and the like go there too so glass houses and all that...