Very interesting! Looks like all of us who ply waters in North Carolina's New Hanover County (Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach) waters had better get pump-out log books ready!

Claiborne,
Joe Johnson of the Wilmington (NC) Star-News reports this morning that Rep Danny McComas, R- New Hanover, has sponsored a bill in the NC legislature (HB 1378) which affects marinas in New Hanover County but would also have a major impact on cruisers. I will be following up to find out more but the following caught my eye:
Marinas will be required to have pump-out services for boaters by Jul 10, 2010.  This is always a good thing.  BUT, in addition this legislation proposes:
Vessels that are required to maintain marine sanitation devices will have to keep record of their pump-outs. Violators of the record-keeping provision could face a Class3  misdemeanor and a $10,000 fine. Enforcement is authorized to wildlife inspectors, marine fisheries inspectors, and sworn law enforcement officers within their proper jurisdiction.
These are very significant fines and they open our vessels up to inspection by many enforcement officers.
Part of the background to this is that tests over a two-year level have found  human coliform bacteria in Banks Channel, behind Wrightsville Beach, which sometimes have exceeded levels allowed by state law.  The sources of this are in question and the reasoning has left me wondering at times.  Here's an example I saw.  Every July 4,  there is a huge raft-up off Masonboro Island south of Wrightsville Beach.  This has been going on for years if not decades and gets larger every year.  A lot of  (mostly young) people go to party on the shore.  The water taxi of which I'm a part-time captain, along with many other vessels, took a number of people to and from the party.  Between the people on the island and those rafted up in boats, there must have been 6,000 young people there.  There was a LOT of beer and food visible.  Of the boats, 80-90% were of the runabout type.  As the day wore on, more and more people were in the water.  In the next edition of the Wrightsville Beach local
newspaper, there were reports and editorials about the effects of discharges from boats and calls to make Wrightsville Beach a no-discharge zone.  There was no mention of the discharges of the people on land, which could have been prevented by porta-johns. (But Wrightsville Beach, which has jurisdiction over this part of the island, would have had to arrange for them.)
Boaters are undoubtedly part of the problem but I am concerned that if this type of legislation goes forward we and the marinas that serve us might end up taking all the blame, and that those of us who cruise will be particularly singled out because we're easy.
Captain John Meskauskas

Subject: holding tanks in New Hanover county
Cruising News: I usually keep my boat in the Wilmington area have done so for 10 years or more and am familiar with the Masonboro party scene (not a participant, just a spectator) and can appreciate the fact that alot of those people are going to the bathroom in the water.  Butt, (pun intended) it was either last summer or the summer before last that they closed down a part of the waterway to swimming in the Masonboro area due to a municipal sewer line break that discharged a bunch of sewer into the ICW.  Maybe was in the Bradley creek area.  Any how, I wonder if the readings were taken at the same time as the sewer main rupture.
Rob Brugh