If you are an avid boater, you will find Florida one of the most enchanting places to boat. There are long stretches of safe coastal waters, and a large area of inland water with good fishing and wild life, and interesting flora. Hundreds of boat enthusiasts think so, too, which is why there is a great deal of potential water pollution hazards in the state.

If you are a boater, and if you are callous about the environment, you can do a lot of damage. You can dump garbage or sewage into the water, and in some cases, even harmful industrial grade chemicals that you may have on board. Imagine ten thousand Florida boaters doing that, and in about a year or so, you will have a Florida that has reeking, dirty waters that is poison for the fish, the trees and mangrove forests, and for people like you.

Florida Boating Law has very strict requirements for waste, oil and garbage disposal, from boaters and others, alike. If you are in public land or state waters, you cannot lawfully dump any untreated raw sewage from a boat. How about dumping garbage in your own private water? No, even that is banned; by Florida laws, dumping untreated garbage in private water is also unlawful. there are No Discharge Zones, where you are prohibited from dumping even treated garbage, like Type 1 or 2 MSD.

The Law is primarily concerned not with the disposal of urine (urine is sterile and relatively less harmful), but with human feces. Feces are positively dangerous substance and have harmful stuff like bacteria and pathogens. These things pollute the water like nothing else, and people do not really like the idea of swimming in someone else’s feces; or in theirs, for that matter. So, boats with installed toilets are required to have some sort of a sanitation system, so that human waste is treated and made harmless. EPA has set the standards on this, and the law is enforced by the Coast Guard. They are allowed to do checks of any boats in Florida waters, and they are mostly looking for the existence of Marine Sanitation Devices. The device, basically, will contain a toilet, a waste treatment facility (MSD) and a holding tank so that garbage is disposed safely on land, under the ground, rather than in open waters.

There are hundreds of ways to avoid the law and dispose of your garbage in water, but if you are a real boating enthusiast, you will know better than to do that. Every pound of waste that you dump into these pristine waters is just going to make Florida boating unfriendly quicker. If you love lazing around or fishing in your boat, in these beautiful waters, you should not only make sure not to dump waste here, but also keep a careful eye on your boating neighbors and spread the good word, generally. For those who are too callous to listen, however, there is always the law and its right arm, the coast guard.