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Minutes
of Clean Water Initiative Meeting
July
20th, 2004
Town
of Shalimar Conference Room
Thank
you all for your participation in the Clean Water Initiative.
Let’s also extend a special “Thank You” to the Town of
Shalimar for hosting our meetings – your hospitality is
certainly appreciated.
The
Committee had another great two-hour discussion that ultimately
led to the formation of a general Action Plan that garnered
unanimous support. That
five-tier Plan (along with a list of the people who volunteered
to work on that portion of the Plan) is listed below.
The
Committee also discussed its limited role as it relates to the
overall surface water improvement effort that is being conducted
in most areas of Okaloosa County.
While the County, several cities, and other coordinated
initiatives are working to resolve other point source and
watershed issues such as storm water discharge, septic tank
elimination, etc., the Clean Water Initiative Committee is
limited in its scope solely to minimizing the potential for the
occurrence of illegal discharging of vessel holding tanks.
Public reaction to press coverage our meeting received
has convinced me that we have not yet done an adequate job of
conveying this message.
Additionally,
we need to be resolute in our communication to the citizens of
Okaloosa County - we are not condemning or casting blame upon
boaters – we are only recognizing the potential for future
problems and acting proactively to avoid them before they may
occur. We need to
somehow re-emphasize that our goal is more public education and
to make pump out facilities easily accessible and as cheap for
boaters to use as possible.
The
Five-Tier Action Plan:
(1)
Develop a
model ordinance for passage by Okaloosa County and the
County’s nine cities. The model ordinance will require that
any marina projects developed will require the installation of
permanent pump-out stations. The model ordinance will further
require all boats slipping at the marina to be “hard-wired”
to the pump-out station. Greg
Kisela and John Hofstad volunteered to coordinate to write the
model ordinance.
(2)
Develop a
Public Education Campaign (similar to the Smokey the Bear
approach) that will help curb potential illegal dumping.
Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance and the Coast Guard Auxiliary
volunteered to develop the Public Education Campaign.
(3)
Develop a plan
to make “dump-out” facilities available at all public boat
launches in Okaloosa County. These facilities are designed to
provide disposal for small, manually removable holding tanks for
vessels that are ordinarily stored on trailers.
PumpOut USA volunteered to develop this plan.
(4)
Develop a
Public / Private partnership (Program) between Okaloosa County
and the four private businesses that are currently providing
mobile pump-out facilities (or intend to provide mobile pump-out
facilities in the future) for a fee.
The Program contemplates offsetting the Operations and
Maintenance costs of providing this service, as well as to
contribute the 25% local match (for a 75% DEP grant) in exchange
for providing free mobile pump-out facilities to all vessels in
Okaloosa County. It
is contemplated that the County will be the administrator of the
Program and the County’s cost for entering into the Program
will be offset by implementing a Clean Water Assessment to the
annual Boater Registration Fees of Okaloosa’s ~19,000
registered vessels.
Steve and Paulette Peterson and Brett Hinley volunteered
to begin working to develop this Program.
(5)
Work to
improve access to pump-out facilities by retrofitting all public
docks in Okaloosa County with permanent stations.
There was no “Action Item” assigned to any volunteers
as the Committee felt this initiative would be implemented as a
consequence of the other facets of the Program.
The
Committee decided that it would hold its third meeting sometime
after Labor Day. I will work with the Town of Shalimar to
determine when and where our next meeting will be held and
notify you a week or two prior to the meeting via email.
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