Hysteria over Heads

The most confused polluters in America are the owners of the nation's estimated 1,500,000 pleasure boats. They contribute less than .07% of all sewage spilled into U.S. waterways, a drop in the slop bucket compared with the daily deluge from archaic municipal "treatment" plants, not to mention the wastes from waterside factories. Unorganized boatowners, though, seem an easier target than major polluters. The upshot is a flood of laws and regulations that boatmen consider arbitrary, capricious, discriminatory and unenforceable.

Most yachtsmen are eager to keep waterways clean and clear. They want to swim and fish over the side without encountering colon bacteria and other health hazards. And until recently, they never thought of themselves as polluters. Although the traditional marine "head" simply flushes wastes through the side of the boat and into the water, such sewage, thanks to nature's purifying processes, used to be only a modest problem in fresh waters and no problem at all in tide-flushed coastal waters.

Strong Difference. Since the boating boom of the early 1960s, though, boatmen and lawmen have agreed that old-fashioned heads are no longer adequate. But they differ strongly in their assessment of two newer ways to control boat sewage: 1) "primary treatment" on board in a device known as a macerater-chlorinator, which vents the purified effluent over the side; or 2) an on-board holding tank requiring that the effluent be pumped out at a dockside station, which in turn pumps it into a local sewage-disposal system.

The second method is now widely established in Midwestern states, which are understandably worried about boat pollution. Their lakes and rivers are the major source of public water supplies. Chicago, for example, draws all its drinking water from Lake Michigan. By city ordinance in 1967. Chicago's boatmen were required to install holding tanks. Though boatmen sputtered, the regulations were reasonable. For one thing, Chicago provided sufficient pump-out stations. Thus no boatman need be caught with an overflowing holding tank and no place to go. For another, the plumbing for direct overboard venting could be left in place; thus, boatmen could cruise to other areas that lacked pump-out stations. Because Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin have passed equivalent legislation, Lake Michigan will soon have uniform rules and facilities.

Weekend Crush. By contrast. New York State's new law makes no sense. Carelessly written in a seeming effort to make political capital out of the public concern over pollution, the statute relies heavily on holding tanks. State officials have outlawed any alternative overboard pumping systems. Yet the state has failed to provide, or require marinas to install, sufficient pump-out stations. After suspending enforcement for four years, New York decided to crack down this spring. Lawmen have been told that they may now board a boat without a warrant to ascertain whether it has an approved toilet. Operating a nonapproved toilet (or--as the law now reads--even being seasick over the side) is a misdemeanor that carries a $100 fine or 60 days in jail, or both.

New York State has 124 pump-out stations--only 18 of them on the coasts. The New York side of Long Island Sound, plied by many thousands of boats, has only three stations. If only half of the 30,000 toilet-equipped boats in New York's coastal waters headed for the pump-out stations at the close of a weekend, there would be almost 1,000 boats lined up at each station; round-the-clock pumping would take about three weeks.

Risking Explosion. Many of New York's pleasure-boaters argue that they simply cannot obey the law as it is now being interpreted, and many law-enforcement officials agree. They are anxiously awaiting a court test of the confusing statute. In some craft, owners claim, installation of a holding tank is prohibitively expensive; in others it is physically impossible. Some boatowners are now using pails lined with disposable plastic bags--and then violating the law by surreptitiously jettisoning the bags rather than turn their floating homes into floating cesspools. Others are installing compromise devices with small holding tanks good for about 50 flushes, which can then be carried ashore and spilled into the nearest toilet. Whatever the size of a holding tank, however, critics point out that its contents end up in municipal sewage plants --which in turn dump their often undertreated effluent into waterways.

Even if New York's coasts had enough pump-out stations, interstate absurdities would remain. A boatman from New Jersey, which has no such law, is subject to being boarded and charged with an offense while passing through New York waters to Connecticut, which has no pump-out stations. A New Yorker leaving his home port on western Long Island Sound for Massachusetts or Maine is in violation of the law for the first few miles if he has an overboard flushing system. Yet he cannot cruise far beyond the Sound unless he has such a system. Meantime, critics say, his holding tank fills up and poses another hazard: the possibility of explosion from gases generated by sewage.

The interstate confusion was supposed to be resolved by the federal Water Quality Improvement Act of 1970. This authorized the Government to supersede state boat-pollution laws. But the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water Quality has not yet decided what the nationwide standards should be. Although the 1970 law called for the best devices "within the limits of available technology," the EPA is caught between state officials, who reject all macerater-chlorinators, and boatmen, who point out that these devices are now so efficient (and superior to many land-based sewage plants) that they should be acceptable nationally. Until the issue is resolved, boatmen in New York and similar states may be marooned.

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