[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 3/30/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

March 30, 2007

 

1.  Top Item -

 

 

Rougher waters for boaters?

U.S. may impose a $1,500 yearly environmental fee.

Sacramento Bee – 3/30/07

By M.S. Enkoji - Bee Staff Writer

 

Sonny Cline pays to license his 22-foot Regal cuddy cabin boat, pays to rent a slip on the Sacramento River and pays taxes on extras like the water space he uses.

How would he feel about forking over more money for a federal environmental permit, maybe $1,500 a year by one estimate?

"Oh, you're kidding? That is insane," Cline said.

 

Owners of the country's 18 million recreation boats might agree.

 

A ruling in a federal lawsuit being heard in California could require new permits on all vessels -- possibly everything from canoes and kayaks to oceangoing cargo ships -- according to recreation boating advocates.

 

"There's a lot of little boats out there," said Bryan Dove, California representative of the Boat Owners Association of the United States.

 

"They don't have that kind of cash. This is just another financial burden on the boater," said Dove, who lives 15 miles west of Stockton.

 

Several environmental groups in Oregon and California have sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, charging that, by not enforcing the 1972 Clean Water Act properly, it failed to stop the invasion of destructive, foreign marine life, such as zebra mussels in the Great Lakes region and Chinese mitten crabs in the Delta and the Bay Area.

 

The invasive species hitchhike in the 21 billion gallons of ship ballast taken in at distant ports and dumped annually around U.S. shores, according to environmental groups.

 

Ballast is water taken on by cargo ships after they unload to balance the vessel for the journey home.

 

A judge in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in September ordered the EPA to create a permit process by September 2008 for vessels that dispense effluent.

The federal agency and the shipping industry tried to confine the permit process to ocean vessels that take on ballast.

 

The court instead issued a sweeping order that extended to any vessel that discharges any fluid, including the typical 15-foot boat purchased for nothing more than puttering down the Delta on weekends, said Duncan Neasham, a spokesman for the National Marine Manufacturers Association in Washington, D.C.

 

"Effluent is anything that comes off a boat," he said. "If you spill a Coke or wash your boat down, or carry a bottle of water on your kayak, you might be included."

Permits could be as much as $1,500, he said.

 

The boat-industry association, which supports controlling ballast on cargo ships, filed papers last week in federal court voicing its concerns.

 

The industry is hoping that Congress will pass a law before the deadline that would largely exempt recreational boaters, Neasham said.

 

Environmental groups, including the San Francisco-based Baykeeper, argue in court documents that 10,000 marine species trek the globe via ballast, causing annual economic losses as high as $137 billion, double the yearly damage by natural disasters in the United States.

 

Without natural predators, uninvited species proliferate in their new homes, causing ecological imbalance and destruction, environmentalists have said.

The zebra mussels, Caspian Sea natives, have spread throughout the Great Lakes region since 1988, according to the Great Lakes Information Network.

The mussels, no larger than a fingernail, clog water pipes in power plants and compete with native species for nutrients.

 

Recreational boating generates only a small source of pollutants, said Margaret Podlich, vice president of government affairs for the Boat Owners Association of the United States.

Congress has never been moved to create a law that specifically targets domestic-traveling recreational vessels, meaning it should support one that excludes them, Podlich said.

Fears of burdensome fees and cumbersome government permits imposed on recreational vehicles are unfounded, said Deb Self, executive director of Baykeeper, a citizens advocacy group that protects waterways in the Delta and Bay Area.

 

"We have no way of knowing what the permit process will be," she said.

 

The initiator of the lawsuit, Northwest Environmental Advocates, believes that the thrust of the regulations will focus on oceangoing vessels, the crux of the problem, said Nina Bell, executive director of the Portland-based group.

 

"We're concerned, too," she said of the domestic boating industry's concerns.

 

There are plenty of boats that could be affected, said Dove, the boat owners association representative.

 

In the Delta, wakeboard boats take in water, bass boats store water onboard for the fish, and larger recreation boats discharge "gray" water and bilge water, which would probably need a permit, he said.

 

The jokes about boaters owning a bottomless pit are more truth than not, said an owner of two vintage boats.

 

"This is ridiculous. Everyone thinks boaters are zillionaires," said Larry Hazelett, a Sacramento retired mechanical contractor who restores wooden boats.

Rising fuel prices, fees, insurance and marina rent are already driving people from the sport, he said.

A yacht broker friend, he said, has double the inventory he normally has.

 

"You're only going to spend so much money doing this or doing that," said Hazelett, 65.

 

Cline said he considers his boat a family activity, one that is increasingly burdensome.

"It's already a relatively expensive hobby," said Cline, 43.

 

"You know with housing prices going up, and gas prices, you start adding all these things up and it takes a lot of the joy out of living here."#

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/146746.html