Barb Thomson
Special to The Record
You find yourself docked beside a beautiful big cruiser.
Its chrome and teak decks are layered overhead like a glazed condominium. Of all the luxurious amenities you imagine inside this boat, a full sewage tank isn鈥檛 one of them. Yet almost every cruising pleasure vessel of size you see on the water has a toilet flushing into a holding tank that measures somewhere between empty and full of human waste.
It鈥檚 called the 鈥渂lack water.鈥�
Defined by the Canada Shipping Act 2001, the rules for black water discharge are layered according to commercial or pleasure vessels and specific area waters. Essentially, pleasure vessels may discharge within one nautical mile from shore if the sewage has been 鈥渃omminuted and disinfected using a marine sanitation device.鈥�
Otherwise, a minimum distance of three nautical miles is required while travelling at 鈥渢he fastest feasible speed.鈥� Significant to our local area where vessels often find themselves 鈥渋n waters that are less than six nautical miles from shore to shore,鈥� discharge is allowed at a speed of 4 knots. And finally, if that鈥檚 not possible, 1) go as fast and as deep as you can during an ebb tide or 2) go into the fastest moving waters that are farthest from shore. It鈥檚 all about the 鈥済o.鈥�
Of course, the best option for the health of our ocean is marine pump-out stations that function in the same way RV sani-dumps work for recreational vehicles. The Comox Valley Harbour Authority has a pump out station located at the end of dock G. The fee for use is $10 and the station is open seasonally. While you don鈥檛 have to be a master mariner to access the pump out, it does require the skill to navigate the length of the channel between moored vessels to position your boat alongside the pump.
The next closest area stations are in Lund and Campbell River. (See the link below for a full list of B.C. coastal stations and regulations.)
In 2018, the Washington State Department of Ecology defined Puget Sound as a 鈥楴o Discharge Zone.鈥� While they banned black water discharge, they also supported their area marinas with federal grant money to install convenient pump-out stations. Our northern dilemma is the insufficient number of pump-out stations and the unsupported small marinas that operate in remote areas of our coastline.
Boating BC Association:
