{"id":2119,"date":"2011-09-07T11:19:46","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T15:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=2119"},"modified":"2011-09-07T12:34:14","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T16:34:14","slug":"restricting-bilge-dumping-in-long-island-sound-finally1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=2119","title":{"rendered":"No More Bilge Dumping in Long Island Sound: Finally!"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Mireya Navarro, NEW YORK TIMES, September 6, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Boating<\/a> Boats will be prohibited from dumping sewage in New York State waters in Long Island Sound under a ban announced on Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new ban, covering 760 square miles, makes the entire Sound a no-discharge zone; Connecticut secured the same designation for its portion of the Sound in 2007.<\/p>\n

The ban, which goes into effect on Thursday, will require an estimated 12,200 recreational and small commercial vessels to dispose of their sewage, mainly human waste, treated or not, at government-run or privately operated pump-out stations along the coast.<\/p>\n

Storm-water runoff and releases from wastewater-treatment plants remain a far larger source of pollution in Long Island Sound than waste from boats, federal officials noted. Still, treated sewage from the boats contains chemicals like formaldehyde and chlorine that harm marine life and pose health risks to swimmers, they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the sewage is discharged close to where people swim,\u201d the E.P.A.\u2019s regional administrator, Judith A. Enck, said, adding that the ban was \u201clong overdue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Government officials and environmentalists described the move as a meaningful step to improve water quality in the Sound, a 110-mile-long estuary between densely populated Long Island and Connecticut. New York officials had already restricted discharges in areas with high boat traffic, encompassing about 50 square miles, and had been awaiting the creation of more pump-out stations before petitioning for the federal action.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an important part of an overall strategy,\u201d said Peter A. Scully, regional director for Long Island for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.<\/p>\n

The ban coincides with plans for more coordinated actions by Connecticut and New York to reduce nitrogen pollution in the Sound \u2014 mostly from sewage treatment plants and agricultural runoff \u2014 which stimulates the growth of bacteria and algae and robs the water of oxygen.<\/p>\n

Considerable progress has been made since a conservation and management plan for the Sound was developed in 1994, Mr. Scully said, with nitrogen levels down by more than 40 percent. Dolphins returned to Long Island Sound a few years ago.<\/p>\n

The new ban, federal officials said, extends to open waters, harbors, bays and navigable tributaries of the Sound and a portion of the East River \u2014 the area between the Hell Gate Bridge connecting Queens to Randalls<\/a> and Wards Islands<\/a> in Manhattan in the west and the northern bounds of Block Island Sound in the east. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s so remarkable about this seemingly innocuous story is, “What took them so long?” Who knew that for all these years those pleasure boats we saw from the beach were dumping their offal into those incoming waves? How many other situations surround us where we are unprotected from obvious environmental assaults?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,353],"tags":[1388,1391,1389,1182,1390],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2125,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions\/2125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}