The Poop on Poop

[Fireboat52]

actually, the only time the smell is offensive is when removing the liquids bottle. Pee stinks.

You can solve that problem very easily. Buy some CampaChem holding tank treatment at Walmart or where ever (get fomaldehyde free). Pour about a quarter cup into a large empty liquid dish washing bottle and fill it up with water. Then squirt about a quarter cup of that mixture into the urine collection bottle each time after you empty it out. Do this by rinsing down the head bowl with a good squirt and let it drain into the bottle. The urine will have no smell when you pour it out.

Sandy

[CharlieJ]

Good idea, except- personally the CampaChem smells worse than the stuff it's covering ;)

I use orange Camco RV Toilet treatment. Also from WalMart, and smells much better in and of itself

[Godot]

I don't know that it is really that big a deal. The odor is only noticeable when removing, and especially emptying, the bucket. Not pleasant; but the task doesn't take that long.

[Fireboat52]

If you are just pouring it overboard then it isn't much of a problem as far as smell goes, but if you are dumping it in the toilet because you are in a marina, then you can stink up the restroom pretty badly. Particularly if you have let the jug sit for a few days.

Sandy

[Fireboat52]

I would like some input on the issue of dumping your pee overboard. If you examine the facts, I think we all can probably agree that swimmers pee in the water. We have one guy in our yacht club that makes quite a show of it at the sand bar cook outs, by backing away from the crowd and announcing his intent as he is standing in waist deep water and he usually gets a positive response (as people back away too) along with a lot of jokes being started.

We know that most pleasure boats don't have heads at all, and most boaters consume a lot of beer, so from that we can safely surmise that a lot of people pee in the water. LEOs spend hours on end on the water and while some of them carry pee jugs, my guess is that many of them just pee over the side. There is a lot of debate as to whether that is legal or not but in any case, lots and lots of people are doing it. Municipalities are notorious for dumping raw and half treated sewage directly into the water.

So here is my point. The number of pleasure boats that have a head aboard and contain the urine is minuscule by comparison. I can see that nobody would want you to pour you pee in the water if it was mixed with poop (show of hands please, all opposed) but there is really no reason that if you had a urine diverting system that you couldn't or shouldn't be able to just pour it overboard. Nor is it unreasonable for those who have urine diverting systems to try to get the laws changed. Thoughts?

Sandy

[David_Old_Jersey]

Over here (outpost of the British Empire  ;D) - we have no War on Poop.

No laws against pooping into the sea (via head or direct!) = no folks on boats to enforce = low tax........and no mass deaths easier (we also get clean beaches awards as well - and they do test the water).

Fish gotta eat  :o

Of course having a 40 foot tidal range kinda helps  ;D.

[Captain Smollett]

Of course having a 40 foot tidal range kinda helps  ;D.

You bet.

So does lower overall impact potential.

List of largest metropolitan areas (stats via that bastion of "correct"  ::) data, wikipedia), and all are near major bodies of water so represent sewage dumping impacts.

1. US (New York area): 22 million
    GB (London area):     9.8 million

Potential impact 2.2 times greater in the US (* see below for note)

2. US (LA area): 18 million
    GB (Manchester area): 2.5 million

Potential impact 7.2 times greater in US

3. US (Chicago area): 9.7 million
    GB (West Midlands Built-up Area): 2.4 million

Potential impact 4 times greater in the US

4. US (Washington, DC): 8.7 million
    GB (West Yorkshire): 1.8 million

Potential impact 4.8 times greater in the US

5. US (Boston): 7.6 million
    GB (Liverpool): 0.9 million

Potential impact 8.4 times greater in the US

(*) Note:  The "potential impact" assumes (among a bunch of other stuff) that the percentage of the populations that are into boating are equal.  I have neither knowledge that this is true nor the desire to try to find out.  I'm just throwing these numbers out for consideration.

So, let's assume for the sake of discussion that the potential impact is the same per capita.  Without any other assumptions, we can conclude that the potential for problems in the environment is about 4 times greater in the US than in the UK.

What we don't know that complicates the issue even further:

(1) We don't know the carrying capacity of the local marine environment is the same.  Either could be greater than the other.  Let's pretend the ocean is the ocean and yes, they are the same.

(2) This is a biggie..we don't know that the carrying capacity for sewage is linear with population.  Based on general ecology principles, we can safely say it is NOT linear with population, but we don't know the ecological system response as a function of population pressure.

In other words, what if the UK marine environment were at capacity...yes, it's handling the current pressure just fine, but what if it cannot handle any more?  In that case, the 4x times pressure the US is putting on the system is over the 'limit' and over-pollution problems would result.

Of course, since I am just guessing at the moment, it is equally likely that the system can 'handle' a lot more than what the UK is putting in.

But...we do know that sewage dumping in the Virgin Islands reached a maximum 'response capacity' a few years ago...there was more sewage being dumped into the lagoons than the system could properly 'treat.'  Or, at least that's what the VI government put out as official word.  So, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is a max local carrying capacity and that boaters CAN exceed it.

Further, the water is tested here as well, and presumably (I make no claim to the truthfulness of this assumption, either) the Clean Water Act (as it applies to boaters) is based on something akin to data that dumping is a problem.  That may be the wildest assumption in the whole discussion.

All of this is to say that while it might seem to make sense that the UK system of "no laws" works fine, to extrapolate that to the US (or other densely populated coastline) may well be fraught with inaccuracy. 

Though I must say I think it's pretty cool that the water is tested and sewage is 'below limits' there.  I wish I had more faith that our laws were based on hard data rather than feel-good environmentalism.