Had a chat with our marina manager today about boat cleaning and $10,000 fines.

He had recently attended a seminar sponsored by Washington State Department of Ecology and two citizens “clean water” groups. The topic was old and new regulations about what liquids marina operators and boaters may discharge into Puget Sound.

Bottom Line – NOTHING – NOT EVEN TAP WATER!

Tacoma tap water is safe to drink but not good enough, in the minds of the clean water advocates, to discharge into Puget Sound!!

He was told that even Tacoma’s world famous non-filtered/non-treated tap water, direct from the Green River (which flows into Puget Sound), is technically not a permissible liquid to be discharged into Puget Sound. He was told that DOE “would prefer” that his staff not pressure wash decks and docks because that uses a lot of Tacoma Municipal Water which is not good for the Sound.

He told me about several boaters who were recently harassed by kayaking clean water advocates for using a pressure washer, no soap or detergent, to clean their boats in our waterway.

On the other hand, my wife who has been responsible for Tacoma Water’s quality and quantity for 30-years, tells me that the US EPA has been and is still forcing Tacoma Water to spend over one hundred million dollars to treat their water because the unfiltered untreated Tacoma water will not meet EPA standards in the near future. Not enough chemical added!

Did you get that?

Tacoma water flows directly from a major Puget Sound tributary to the consumer to my pressure washer with the addition of only chlorine (550 parts per billion is the standard residual).

Tacoma Water reports they meet every Federal and State EPA/DOE standard for water quality and put only trace amounts of chlorine in the water. The water is perfectly safe to drink.

Washington State DOE says we can’t use city water to wash our boats because there are too many chemicals in it and it is not clean enough/pure enough to discharge into Puget Sound.

The Federal EPA says Tacoma Water is not being treated enough and more chemicals must be added and filtering needs to be done in the near future.

We can drink it but can’t let it flow into Puget Sound.