YACHT CLUBS OF MARYLAND
LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS OFFICER report
or
BOATING, WATERWAYS, and the ENVIRONMENT
Click Here to see a list of the BWEL Committee Members
By Legislative Affairs Officer Deb Noon
The Maryland General Assembly session ended with nothing that directly affects recreational boaters. This is the first time in years we in the yachting community have not needed to provide written or verbal testimony on a bill.
The hot issue for all boaters is at the national level. A bill in the Senate, S. 2766 "The Clean Boating Act of 2008" was formally introduced on March 13, 2008, which, among other things, would exempt recreational boaters from the need to apply to the EPA for discharge permit for each of your boats, renew it every 5 years, and potentially get a separate permit for every state where you operate the boat.
In 1999, environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an attempt to control the spread of aquatic nuisance species by mandating the treatment of ballast water in large commercial ocean going ships. The court ruling in 2006 interpreted current law to require EPA permits for all vessels including even dinghies and canoes. Obviously, such permitting would do nothing for the environment because discharging bad stuff like oil is already illegal.
Getting a permit to bail rainwater, wash water, and seawater leakage out of your boat is obviously a silly waste of time and resources. Nevertheless, Boat US warns that if Congress does not act, operating your vessel after September 30, 2008 without an EPA permit would be illegal. The EPA is reportedly working on a recreational boater permitting process, just in case.
The following link from Boat US provides all the details and whom you should contact: http://www.boatus.com/gov/alert_0308.asp
Maryland Senators Cardin and Mikulski are already among the bill co-sponsors but we boaters need to keep pushing to get Congress to act on the legislation before the Sept 30th deadline.
As always, if you have any issues that you would like discussed or followed up on, please drop me an email at DebSOM917@aol.com.
Home | Navigation | Webmaster