Pate says the proposed standards 

 speak to the three key issues concern- 

 ing coastal marinas: 



— Dredging, which is necessary in 

 most marinas to keep channels open, 

 increases turbidity and can put some 

 fish at risk. "One of the big problems is 

 locating marinas in shallow, tidewater 

 creeks that offer protection from 

 storms, but also carry the necessity to 

 dredge for maintenance and expan- 

 sion," Pate says. "Traditionally, these 

 small tidal creeks are some of the most 

 productive areas, and dredging 

 changes the character of the nursery 

 areas significantly." 



— The construction of marina docks 

 and slips in public waters is another 

 serious issue. Pate notes that many 

 marinas freely use publicly owned 

 waters for building sites; he lists 

 several cases in which marina opera- 

 tions actually block waterways to 

 other traffic. Coastal Management has 

 asked the N.C. Department of Ad- 

 ministration to decide how the state 

 should regard such construction in 

 public waters, and has suggested the 

 state employ a leasing program. But 

 the Department of Administration has 

 not acted on the recommendation. 

 Pate says that an obstruction of public 

 waterways could be challenged in 

 court, unless some sort of formal leas- 

 ing program is begun. In lieu of such a 

 program, he says, "we have the 

 responsibility of holding these public 

 areas in trust for the use of all the 

 public." 



— Waste disposal and water quality 

 around marinas are also stubborn 

 problems in North Carolina, as they 

 are in other coastal states. Because 

 they are a gathering place for people, 

 even well-managed marinas produce 

 some contaminants, if from no other 

 sources than the rainwater runoff from 

 parking lots and rooftops. 



Coastal Management's reluctance to 

 endorse publicly owned, open-water 

 sites on sounds and creeks leaves the 

 office with standards that tend to 

 favor shoreline basins partly sur- 

 rounded by high ground. 



Spencer Rogers, Sea Grant's coastal 

 engineering specialist, has responded 

 to Coastal Management's proposed 

 standards, and has expressed reserva- 

 tions about endorsing basins over 

 open-water sites for marinas. 



Rogers points out that research into 

 the question of how much marinas con- 

 taminate nearby waters is still incon- 



clusive, but there is some evidence that 

 open-water sites create fewer pollution 

 problems than mostly enclosed basins. 

 A study funded by Virginia Sea Grant 

 at the Virginia Institute of Marine 

 Science found that water samples 

 taken near a marina showed no 

 significantly higher bacteria counts 

 than samples taken farther away. 

 Other studies have shown very high 

 coliform bacteria counts in more 

 nearly enclosed marina basins, where 

 water circulation is not as good. 



"It seems as if local hydrography 

 has more to do with water quality than 

 being near a marina does," Rogers 

 says. He points out that basins tend to 

 concentrate contaminants, not only 

 from marinas, but from other sources 

 such as septic tanks and industry. 



"In order to minimize the ecological 

 impacts, what you would do is to 

 design the marina for a maximum of 

 wind or tidal flushing and a minimum 

 of dredging," Rogers says, "and that 

 would mean an open-water site. But 

 that encroaches on the rights of others 

 trying to use the water, by obstructing 

 public-trust waters. So that leaves you 

 with the question of what serves the 

 public interest best — having marinas 

 on the open-water sites, or preventing 

 them there?" 



Gene Floyd's answer to that ques- 



Just two years old and 30 members 

 strong, the North Carolina Marina 

 Association is like a growing adoles- 

 cent, testing its new muscles and 

 finding its voice. But the association's 

 president, Gene Floyd, insists the 

 group was not formed "to fight city 

 hall." 



"We don't want to build a barrier 

 between us and the agencies we deal 

 with," Floyd says. "We give credit to 

 Leon Abbas (Sea Grant's marine 

 recreation specialist) for helping us see 

 the need for working with these agen- 

 cies, not against them." 



The association made Abbas an 

 honorary member for his role in help- 

 ing the group get the information it 

 needed to organize itself and find its 

 identity. Abbas says the marina 

 association is teaching the industry 

 that it can communicate and solve 



tion reflects the marina operators' 

 view: "We feel like we're a necessary 

 industry for people who want to use 

 the waters," he says. "We provide a 

 service. Without us, the public would 

 have a hard time getting access to the 

 water at all." 



Coastal Management had already 

 dropped, before the July meeting, one 

 of its most controversial marina stan- 

 dards. The standard required marinas 

 to provide pumpout stations for 

 removing wastes stored aboard boats. 



"It was a tremendous enforcement 

 problem," Pate says of the require- 

 ment. "It only applied to new marinas, 

 and we found that, where the pump- 

 outs were put in, there was very little 

 use of them. Some were never used at 

 all." 



Pate says that the pumpout require- 

 ment was meant as a companion to the 

 U. S. Coast Guard's new regulation 

 forbidding boats to discharge un- 

 treated waste through their hulls into 

 nearshore waters. In order to comply 

 with that regulation, most boaters 

 would have had to outfit their craft 

 with expensive treatment systems or 

 somewhat less expensive onboard 

 holding tanks. Since the tanks have to 

 be emptied, Coastal Management felt 

 marinas should be required to provide 

 Continued on next page 



some of its problems, collectively. 

 Before the association, Abbas said, 

 "there was a feeling of isolation, since 

 they are geographically isolated." 



Floyd says the association is tack- 

 ling some routine business matters, 

 such as how to secure group insurance 

 rates, but has also found that its voice 

 can publicly represent the interests of 

 the industry. When, during the Carter 

 administration, a ban on weekend 

 boating was proposed as one of the 

 standby measures states might employ 

 during an energy crisis, the associa- 

 tion's members spoke against the plan 

 during a public hearing in Raleigh. 

 They were heard, and North 

 Carolina's energy office dropped the 

 ban from its list of options. 



"What they've found is that they 

 are not alone," Abbas says. "They can 

 find more solutions through coopera- 

 tion than they can individually." 



Industry finding voice, clout 



