Posted on 11/19/2007 8:20:16 AM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON – Before Sandy Purdon could steer his 55-foot Fleming powerboat out of a Maryland yacht club last month for a voyage through the Panama Canal to San Diego, he had to pay documentation fees, Coast Guard fees, customs fees, FCC licensing fees, sales tax and personal property tax.
Were Purdon to embark on the same adventure a year from now, he also might find himself paying as much as $1,500 for a federal environmental permit every time he crosses into a state's waters.
That can add up to a chunk of change. Although Purdon can probably afford it, he, like many of the 18 million recreational boaters in the nation, worries that the court-ordered permit will scare off existing and would-be boat owners.
“Every time you add a fee, it knocks a certain number of people out of recreational boating,” said Purdon, 64, a Point Loma resident and owner of San Diego's Shelter Cove Marina. “Once you kill people from buying boats, it's a trickle-down effect on all businesses.”
A ruling last year by the U.S. District Court for Northern California required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate “effluent discharges incidental to the normal operation of vessels.”
The idea was to prevent damage to domestic waters from foreign marine species lurking in the ballast water that large vessels such as cargo tankers and cruise ships dump after using the water for stability. The invasive species are generally plants, fish and marine animals such as mussels that attach themselves to a boat and travel from one port to another.
The court order also covered discharges from smaller recreational boats, including water used to cool the engine, the “bilge” water that collects at the boat's lowest point and must be pumped out, the “gray” water from a boat's sink or shower, and the deck runoff. The order also could cover sailboats if they have automatic bilge pumps.
The EPA has until September to create a permitting plan for all vessels covered under the court order, which includes the nearly 1 million recreational boats registered in California. Many owners, including Purdon, are battling the new requirement with help from congressional lawmakers.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has pledged to seek an exemption for recreational boats.
“Recreational boating and sport fishing should be allowed to continue as they always have,” Boxer said.
Asked about boaters' complaints, an EPA spokeswoman referred to a document spelling out her agency's responsibilities under the court order. The document acknowledges that the new permitting plan poses “unique challenges” and that the EPA “lacks practical experience permitting” recreational boats. On the other hand, the EPA is the nation's principal pollution-prevention agency and enforcer of the federal Clean Water Act.
The group that filed the initial lawsuit, Northwest Environmental Advocates, argues that the cumulative discharge from many vessels, even smaller ones, can harm the environment.
“The motivation behind the lawsuit was ballast water, but the petition addressed the regulation as a whole,” said Nina Bell, the group's director. “The court agreed with our position.”
Purdon said that's going overboard.
“Every time you exhale, you're polluting the air. How crazy do we want to get?” said Purdon, who was appointed to the California Boating and Waterways Commission by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Under the new permit structure, critics argue, a boater wanting to travel from California to Oregon to Washington must get a separate EPA permit for each state. Although no one is certain how much the permits might cost, boating experts estimate that they would range from several hundred dollars to as high as $1,500 per permit.
“It's something the average boat owner would not tolerate,” said Dave Geoffroy, executive director of the Southern California Marine Association, the nation's largest regional marine trade group. “It would take thousands and thousands of pleasure boats off our waterways.”
For manufacturers of recreational boats, marine engines and boat accessories, the new requirement potentially means far less business for the $33 billion-a-year industry.
“This presents a huge barrier to people continuing to boat or new people getting into boating, because it adds significant expense and complexity,” said Thom Dammrich, president of the 1,700-member National Marine Manufacturers Association.
Dammrich's organization, which runs the annual San Diego Boat Show, represents as many as 30 boating groups – from the Recreational Boaters of California to the American Sportfishing Association – that have banded together to fight the EPA permits.
Dammrich's group said California ranks No. 2 in the nation after Florida in the number of registered recreational boats, with nearly 1 million mechanically propelled boats – which includes sailboats with motors – and an additional 71,036 sailboats, canoes and kayaks.
California also is second in the nation in boat sales: In 2006, Californians generated $1.21 billion in new powerboat, motor, trailer and accessory purchases. The state has 83 boat builders and more than 8,000 employees in the boating industry.
“A lot of people in the lower-income brackets survive off boat maintenance and boat repair, and the fewer you have out there to repair, the more people you have out of jobs,” Purdon said.
A federal court has ruled that a fee on large commercial vessels implemented to help deal with pollution and foreign species that are dumped with ballast and bilge water also applies to private recreational craft. The fee is charged when boats travel from state to state.
Pro: The pollution and invasive-species problem is cumulative, and smaller boats contribute to it; owners should pay.
Con: The regulation targeted cargo ships and tankers. Many recreational boat owners can't afford the fee; fewer boats will have a rippling economic effect.
“Every time you exhale, you’re polluting the air. How crazy do we want to get?”
—
That’ll be $20 on crazy is as crazy does.. :-}
Not crazy it’s just california
Recreational boaters like their bilges dry. Wet bilges are smelly and unhealthy. Most recreational boats of any size have multiple automatic bilge pumps to ensure that water doesn't stay in the bilge for long.
The cooling water that flows through my engine or my HVAC system is water that was sucked into their cooling systems only moments before. If it is depositing "non-native species" into the water (and they would have to be pretty small to get past the strainers), those same species were already there.
The "gray water" that flows from sink drains and shower sumps is fresh water -- the same water I drink and brush my teeth with. Unless the municipalities that supply that water have screwed up big time, it contains no "species," non-native or otherwise.
This is not a small issue for a recreational boat owner. When I take my boat North from Maryland to Maine next summer, I will, depending on my route, pass through the waters of as many as nine different states. A trip South to Florida in the winter would take me through the waters of five different states. That adds up to a lot of money to address a "problem" that, as far as recreational boaters are concerned, is a non-issue.
We continue to pay for the liberal legacy of Nixon.
Two different questions
Trailer Boats are Responsible for introducing nuisance species to other areas. (Such as Milfoil in Southern Maine)
How to deal with the issues of small craft versus large commercial craft is another. We all play a part in preventing the proliferation of non-native species. However I don’t believe requiring all of us to obtain some EPA permit will fix anything. People need education not a tax.
It’s not just California, it a federal law. Numerous groups, such as BoatUS (of which I am a member) are fighting this. this was supposed to be for preventing non-native species FROM OVERSEAS from getting into our waterways.
Wouldn’t the trailered boat issue be solved most easily by requiring that the bottoms of the trailered boats and their trailers be hosed down with fresh water before backing the trailer into the water and launching the boat?
How is this legal? I thought the constitution prevented one state from charging a tariff on goods crossing state lines from another state. Am I wrong?
The effluent plume from sea lions at Ano Nuevo is visible from space.
Yes. This is the Federal government charging you for crossing state lines. Ain't it fun?
No, you're not wrong. The difference is that this is the feds, not the states, imposing it and it's a fee, not a tariff on goods.
Currently the recommendation is to wash down the boat, trailer, engine cooling system and any systems that use raw water (Livewells, etc)be thoroughly flushed before the boat is launched into a different body of water.
The best idea I have seen for this is a fresh water hose available at the launch ramp area. This way the boat operator can hose everything down immediatly after pulling the boat out of the water.
At any rate EPA discharge permits won’t do anything to prevent the spread of species like the Milfoil.
Hmm, and it's not for commerce either.
Just like the luxury tax that crippled the recreational boat building industry.
Or else you could take the offshore route, which many people underprepared for blue-water passages just might decide to do. Leading, of course, to a sharp spike in distress calls and deaths - a completely predictable side effect of unwise regulation...
There is also one other thing that you could throw in;
Limiting & or denying a persons travel with out any more documents. Here comes “Where are your papers! You can not travel without your papers!”
Oh yes it is! The courts define "commercial" as anything involving the expenditure of money or its equivalent (that's right, barter too). Hours on the boat, changes to its asset account of fuel, etc... is therefore all commercial.
This from a "Republican" administration. Ain't fascism grand?
It's all for your own good you know. ;-)
I’ve run offshore, and the boat and I can handle that. Doing that on a run to Florida gets dicey, though, because you are never completely out of the storm season (it doesn’t have to be a hurricane), and there are not that many good ports of refuge on an outside passage.
If the United States signs the UN’s Law of the Sea Treaty “LOST” these fees will be nothing compared to what the UN will dream up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.