Pollution Prevention - Boat Bottom Maintenance — CCE Marine Digital Education

Pollution Prevention • Boat Bottom Maintenance

About the Project

Sustainable Solutions for Anti-fouling Paints and Boat Bottom Maintenance

Biofouling is defined as algae, microorganisms, plants and animals that adhere to or grow on either water-going vessels or structures in the water and interfere with or prevent these vessels and structures from performing correctly. Consequently, bio fouls must be removed on a periodic basis. This can be done manually by power washing. There are also products designed to coat vessels and structures to prevent or limit adherence by bio fouls. Products designed for antifouling may depend on creating a slick, hard surface that prevents adherence, but more often they are paints or preparations in of ablative formulations designed to create a surface that slowly wears away through the action of water, sloughing off marine fouls as it does so. Many of these ablative formulations contain heavy metals such as copper or zinc. When ablative formulations wear away during use or when vessels are power washed to remove marine fouls or for routine maintenance, quantities of these heavy metals become free to potentially cause pollution issues in already environmentally challenged waters. Power washing boat bottoms for routine cleaning or to remove and repaint also leads to contaminated wastewater, which if not properly captured and disposed of can runoff into the waterbodies or seep into and move with the groundwater.

An estimated 30,000-50,000 boats are located in the Long Island Sound alone on any single day of the summer; these include pleasure, commercial and regulatory crafts from NY, CT, NJ, RI and many other states. According to the Recreational Boating Report from 2019, there were 440,381 powerboats registered, with 435,213 of these for recreational purposes in the state of New York. While not all necessarily may be located within Long Island waterbodies, these figures still give an idea of the vast scale of watercraft potentially (and often unintentionally) contributing to pollution problems around Long Island. Although marinas should be operating to a certain set of standards when it comes to power washing and collecting and disposing of the effluent containing ablative residues and marine fouls (these create their own pollution issues), not all boats are power washed in marinas and not all marinas (including private, municipal and county facilities) may be aware of the best management practices for dealing with these potential contaminants. Boat owners and marina owners/industry may not be aware of or are afraid or unwilling to try less toxic antifouling alternatives. In general, this lack of knowledge or uncertainty is the reason we have developed a series of workshops, factsheets, a best management practices (BMPs) manual and other educational efforts tailored to raise community awareness of Long Island’s fragile ecology which will help to reduce potential pollution from antifouling practices and products.

The goal is to create sustainable behavior changes through raised awareness and educational resources that provide guidance on: improving water quality, reducing heavy metal pollution, reducing soil contaminants, increasing environmental conservation by restoring healthy habitat through behavioral changes, mitigating waste at the source by raising awareness of BMPs for antifouling removal, and antifouling effluent collection, storage and disposal, and promoting less toxic antifouling choices.