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Photo Vincent Guadazno
Out beyond Race Point is Cape Cod Bay and the town wants the bay declared a no discharge area. |
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Effort underway to keep boats from dumping in bay
By Pru Sowers
Banner Staff
PROVINCETOWN – Provincetown is joining a Cape-wide effort to have all of Cape Cod Bay declared a “no discharge area,” meaning commercial and recreational boats would not be allowed to empty their septic tanks into the bay even if they are beyond the legal three-mile limit.
The proposed designation would have an impact on Provincetown’s commercial fishing and whale-watching industries, which routinely dump their tanks in open waters beyond the allowed three-mile limit from shore. The proposal would require them to pump their sewage into a holding tank on MacMillan Pier, where it would be released into the municipal sewer system during non-peak times.
Provincetown Harbormaster Rex McKinsey is working with the state Office of Coastal Zone Management, the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, the state Dept. of Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to gather information for a request to the EPA for a no discharge designation. Ten other Cape Cod towns are involved in the effort, as well.
“This is the water we swim in,” McKinsey said. “This is the water we eat out of. Anything we can do to assist that water quality will help. We shouldn’t be discharging untreated water into our water.”
Theresa Barbo, director of the Cape Cod Bay Ocean Sanctuary Program at PCCS, is part of the No Discharge Area Working Group, which is in the process of collecting data to support a future application from CZM to the EPA. The EPA is empowered to create a no discharge region.
“Any time raw or even treated sewage gets dumped into the bay it harms the environment,” Barbo said.
Cape Cod Bay is about 603 square miles and its boundaries stretch from Provincetown’s Race Point to Brandt Rock in Duxbury. The bay stretches 20 miles into the North Atlantic Ocean and is the southernmost region of the Gulf of Maine as well as the largest coastal bay in the North Atlantic. Its current water quality is the cleanest in the larger Massachusetts Bay, according to Todd Callaghan, CZM no discharge coordinator.
However, he said, vigorous development on the shores surrounding Cape Cod Bay have environmentalists worried it won’t remain that way without help.
“Throughout the Cape, a lot of people are concerned, especially in near-shore waters, about Cape soils and the number of people and septic systems,” he said.
Whale-watching boats in Provincetown would likely feel the greatest local impact if they had to return to MacMillan Pier to dump their septic tanks. Steve Milliken, president of the Dolphin Fleet, has three boats, each with a 500-gallon septic tank. In the height of the season, he said, his company runs between seven and nine trips a day, with each boat usually pumping out their tank every trip.
However, Milliken said his boats never dump into the proposed no discharge area because whales are usually found outside of Cape Cod Bay. In addition, he said, most of what is pumped out of his boats’ septic tanks is seawater.
“We have a salt water system that is about 90 percent water. It’s really quite a minimal thing. I don’t really call it polluting. It’s letting out amounts of solid waste. The toilet paper is minimal,” Milliken said.
Jim Craig, managing partner of the Portuguese Princess whale-watching fleet, said his boats also usually empty their septic tanks outside of Cape Cod Bay, although “it depends on where the whales are.” He said he would not object to pumping his tanks into a holding facility on MacMillan Pier as long as he didn’t have to pay for the pumping or maintenance of the waste reservoir.
“If it’s just a matter of having a place to put it, it’s no big deal to us. If they provide a place to put it, that’s OK,” Craig said.
Steve McKenna, Cape & Islands regional coordinator for CZM, said the goal is for towns in the Cape Cod Bay area to apply for grants to pay for new pump-out facilities on their waterfront. A pump-out station that could handle Provincetown’s commercial fleet could cost between $50,000 and $100,000; however, grants would cover 75 percent of that cost, with Provincetown picking up the remaining 25 percent in either funds or in-kind services from, for example, the department of public works.
“Our goal is not to have [a financial impact on boat owners]. You have to make it work for them,” McKenna said.
However, Milliken said there might be other costs associated with a wharf-side pump-out station that would fall on boat owners. He said he would have to install a new septic system on his boats that would separate waste solids from the salt water in order to pump it into another holding tank.
“There is a lot more to it than meets the eye,” Milliken said.
psowers@provincetownbanner.com
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Jun 7th, 2007