First answer this question: What are you doing trying to discharge your
holding tank into a body of water? Even the rinse water contains crap.

First answer this question: What are you doing trying to discharge
your
holding tank into a body of water? Even the rinse water contains crap.



*************

????????

It is perfectly legal, and a very common practice, to discharge
directly overboard when more than three miles offshore in the ocean.
Notice that the poster's closest pump out station is a four-hour cruise
away, and he has noted that where he intends to pump out it is
perfectly legal to do so. In a sal****er environment and with a
mega-billion to one dilution ratio, moderate quantities of human waste
are environmentally benign.

The concept may seem foreign to freshwater, inland lake boaters and it
should be.
Dumping into a small body of water that may be shallow, not frequently
flushed, and is likely used for swimming, water skiing, or even
drinking water is going to raise the fecal coliform to an unhealthy
level. While a one boat exception wouldn't create an enormous problem,
every boater would want to be considered the "exception" so a strict
enforcement is appropriate.

This guy dumping a holding tank several miles from shore in open salt
water is doing no more damage to the environment than the average city
dweller who flushes the john, sends the stuff to a plant for minimal
treatment and dilution, and then watches it bubbling up a few hundred
yards from shore- often in a freshwater or inland salt water
environment.

Some of the cleanest water one will ever be lucky enough to boat in is
up in British Columbia, where until just recently pumpouts didn't even
exist. This situation can exist because the waters are large, deep, and
salty and the number of boaters per square mile is relatively
small......exactly the conditions one would expect to encounter three
or more miles offshore. The large city of Victoria treated it's sewage
by running it through a screen to filter out rags, etc, as well as to
break up the largest "chunks". That was it. The practice either
continued until very recently or may still be the norm up there. Their
waters are cleaner than most.

Communities along rivers often extract drinking water from the same
body of water that received the outflow from the treatment plant
50-miles upstream. To me, that's a gross concept but to folks who live
there it probably isn't a big deal.

It's long been a fact that some of the best lobstering is around the
outfalls from sewer treatment plants on the east coast. The lobsters
are finding a lot to eat in that "treated" sewage.

Do you have a grassy yard around your house? If so, and if you are
using commercial fertilizer and weed killers on it you are contirbuting
far more to water pollution than somebody pumping a holding tank into
the open ocean three or more miles from shore.

There's no reason to be frightened of human waste. It isn't very
pleasant and can transfer certain diseases under certain conditions and
concentrations, but its been with us for millions of years and it's an
unavoidable byproduct of biological activity. Proper management and
disposal is important, and that can include putting it directly back
into the environment where safely appropriate. Owners of properties
with septic tanks, outhouses, etc, have been doing just that for years.
Of the "stuff" coming out of the average holding tank, the chemicals we
dump in for odor control, etc, are incredibly more lethal than the
human waste.