Yet another NYC sewage spill

[CalebD]

Here is a news article on it: NYC beachgoers told to stay out of water after raw sewage spill - CNN.com
Here is a quote from the article: "The plant is responsible for treating 120 million gallons of wastewater a day on Manhattan's west side."

So, lets get this straight, the plant 'treats' 120 million gallons per day and has been dumping raw sewage into the Hudson River for over 3 days so at least 360 million gallons of raw sewage is now in the estuary. They had another fire today and released more sewage so lets just say that at least 400 million gallons of untreated waste water has been dumped. Yum! The news articles do not seem to want to quantify the actual amount of $hit that has been released and the municipality (NYC) does not seem to want to advertise how big a polluter they are.
Not a peep in the news about the EPA, USCG or other agencies intervening to help out or fine the offending parties. Yet, you as a boater can be fined a small fortune for dumping your own waste water within 3 miles of the coast or releasing a small amount of oil into the environment.
Is it just me or is this situation really just FUBAR?
The real mandate to keeping our waters clean should be to enforce the big polluters (municipalities) treatment plants rather then sending CG and EPA folks after private pleasure boats with holding tanks that are no bigger then say 40 gallons (that is a big tank for most sailboats under 32'). It should be enough that our boats are equipped with approved MSD and holding tanks and that we use them in areas we are supposed to, yet we are vilified by various agencies as 'a' source of the problem.
The sheer amount of pollution coming from land based 'mishaps' absolutely dwarfs the likely amount that private pleasure craft could produce if everyone were dumping overboard, all the time.
This makes me wonder about cruise liners with their thousands of passengers and what regulations they 'follow' while out cruising.
We are not the problem. We never were.
Am I preaching to the choir here?

[kd3pc]

you are preaching to the choir.

I calculated for a local MD paper last year that one spill of the Baltimore City or Cumberland, MD plants (both are notorious for dumps) would be some amount more than ALL the boats in MD, VA, DC, PA, DEL combined ALL dumped a 40 gallon holding tank at the same time, on the same day, in the same cove. Now the reality is that some of those boats never see water, many don't have holding tanks as they are too small, some never get used, etc.. Proving that the shoreside sewage plants are the real problem...not the small boater.

Now understand, that you are only hearing about ONE site. Many sites do this on a regular basis any time it rains/snows, or equipment fails or as the case in Baltimore and Cumberland, their systems just can't handle the through put.

From NorthJersey.com "As much as 30 billion gallons of New York sewage and storm water from its streets overflows into the region’s waterways every year when treatment plants are overwhelmed during a heavy rainstorm or snow melt."

our little boats can't make that much sewage in a year if they ALL tried...