On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 01:46:52PM -0500, Norm wrote: > Not mentioned (until now) in this thread but always in the background is the > Potty Problem. Suffice to say, the EPA has stated overwhelmingly that > agricultural runoff, both from farms and from people’s lawns, is by far the > largest pollution source in the country today. In the Chesapeake Bay the > stated most predominate problem is civilization itself, with particulate > run-off from disturbed soil reducing sunlight to underwater meadows – the > base of the food pyramid – causing a severe and widespread reduction in the > entire ecosystem. In some places, such as the St Johns River here in > northeast Florida, leakage from the septic systems of waterfront homes is a > significant problem, so much so that the government is considering grants to > homeowners to upgrade their black water systems (no mention of giving the > same benefits to boaters). > Livaboards are presumed to be fouling their environment. Certainly this > may be true to a degree. But to keep things in perspective, those on the > land are doing so also, and to a far greater degree because there are so many > more of them. Some livaboards, such as those of us with composting toilets, > do not foul the waters at all. And let us remember that biological waste is > a normal and required part of the natural environment, welcomed by some of > its inhabitants, and that a salt marsh is said to have the highest > concentration of biomass on the planet.
This reminds me of frequent occurrences at my winter marina in the spring; there's a pedestrian bridge overhead, and a storm drain outlet artfully concealed at one end of the marina. Naturally, when spring comes and all the snow and ice thaw, substantial quantities of garbage are washed down the drain, into the marina. Additionally, all the tourists who were (thankfully) scared off by the cold weather start coming back, walking across the bridge, and occasionally yelling down to us liveaboards that we should pick up "our" garbage from the water. In one particularly notable case, a piece of plastic drifted out of reach, but was clearly drifting towards another dock where it could be easily collected. The idiot on the bridge kept on shouting down to us that we weren't trying hard enough to remove this piece of plastic, while we went about our other chores, waiting for it to drift into reach. Yeah, this touches a nerve... -Kris -- Kris Coward http://unripe.melon.org/ GPG Fingerprint: 2BF3 957D 310A FEEC 4733 830E 21A4 05C7 1FEB 12B3 _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
