Georgia Strait Alliance and the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation are calling upon the federal and provincial governments to make a commitment to plan, fund and enforce comprehensive marine waste disposal.

Sign and send us this letter.

Background

Canada’s marine sewage disposal options are woefully inadequate. In fact, the Strait of Georgia has less than 40 facilities available for many of the approximately 350,000 vessels that use this coast and need this service.

Currently there is no agency plan to supply more sewage pump-out services.  Vessel owners and operators want to do their part to ensure the full intent of the regulation is upheld (i.e. protection of the marine environment) and are required by regulation to install holding tanks on their vessels, however, with pump-out services not available in many regions, boaters have no choice but to dump raw sewage in or near sensitive areas.

The new regulations under the Canada Shipping Act (Regulations for the Prevention of Pollution from Vessels and for Dangerous Chemicals) have come into force in May 2007 making it illegal in many circumstances for boats and ships to dump raw sewage within 3 nautical miles of the Canadian shoreline. 

This is a positive step toward protecting our most sensitive marine areas. However a significant section in the regulations allows for raw sewage discharge where the distance between land is less than six miles unless there is a sewage pump-out service.   This will include unique areas like the Gulf islands, Desolation Sound, shellfish and other fisheries and more extremely sensitive marine ecosystems.

"The new regulation has a huge hole in it" McIsaac points out, "the way the reg is written we need over 1300 pumpout facilities to protect BC's 29,000 km coastline, a ridiculously expensive solution."