Boaters Beware the EPA
If you have $800 in your pocket, hang onto it for a while. Currently the EPA is pressing on with regulations that will require us anglers and anyone else who has a boat that discharges water (i.e. motor with water intake, bilge pump, or livewell system), to be liable and in compliance for maintaining a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Cost? $800 ballpark.
Before you jump up and throw something, there’s hope in the form of a legislative fix called the Recreational Boating Act of 2007 and has been presented to the House (HR 2550) and Senate (S. 2067). The problem is that this legislation is being resisted by uneducated opposition who believe that this disturbs the clean water act.
Another hope come in the form of Democratic Florida Senator Bill Nelson who is also fighting to ammend the Ballast Water Ammendment S.1578 which would basically exclude smaller recreational boaters and uphold the regulation against larger commercial vehicles. Go Bill. BASS has asked us to contact our states senator if they are in fact on the committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation and show your support for the ammendment. To see if your senator sits on the board, go to http://commerce.senate.gov/public and review the committee.
I can only hope that the opposition sits at the ammendment hearing with open ears. If they do that then I see no way reason they cannot support Senator Bill Harris’s ammendment. I mean who are they really after here? As long as you keep the commercial inport and export vessels coming from overseas regulated, than that should substantially decrease the worries of many. I think it’s fair to say that most of us who fish on inland reservoir waters will never have our boats docked at the local marina next to a 300ft cargo liner. These are the ships bringing foreign invasive species and pollutants to our waters.
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