Gray water tank regulations in Europe

This may seem like an evasive answer but the regs covering grey water place a boat operator in a gray area. It is not so much that a boat is not required to have a grey water tank as it is that many jurisdictions do not allow the discharge of pollutants and the definition of pollution can be as varied as the materials which are considered to pollute.

Perhaps the best way to approach the issue for now, that is until the regulators develop a single rule that applies to everyone everywhere, is that grey water discharge is more a social issue than a legal one in most places. It is just rude and nasty to dump stinking galley waste and soap scum into your neighbor's garden so to speak.

The document linked below is a Canadian point of view and it may well reflect the tone of regulation that is coming our way.


http://www.bernardpartners.com/images2005/pdfs/tempgreyversion.pdf

Hi,

I have spent a bit of time with my Nose in MARPOL Manual this afternoon looking for something else and have a quick look to see if there is an answer to your question, I can't find anything meaningful.

Not sure when Marmots article was authored but did find another interesting Canadian one from Fall 2007.

http://www.cmma.ca/cmma/downloads/Greywatersep071.pdf

Last line of 2nd to last Paragraph on Page 2 has this little gem in it:

The Guidelines also note that greywater, including dishwater, is not to be considered as garbage.

Just out of curiousity, was the reason for your question related to someone telling you that you had to fit a greywater tank to comply with some regulation?

I did quite a bit of research last year for an article on wastewater that was published in an industry magazine and the simple answer then and now to your direct question is no. Except that in the meantime Turkey has passed a regulation requiring washbasin and shower drains go to a waste tank. In that case directing the waste to the blackwater tank would comply with the rule.

Most of the exisiting regulations don't even require a blackwater tank, they just state that discharge of raw sewage into the sea is prohibited. You are perfectly free to keep a bucket in your stateroom if you like, just make sure it gets carried ashore to a proper disposal site or is dumped overboard beyond the national limit. Some countries allow discharge of treated sewage without a requirement for holding, some don't in some places. The regs are changing rapidly and it behooves the prudent mariner to know the local rules.

But of course there are few simple answers in this area and that is why my answer was not quite what you asked. If an owner wants to operate in all the nice places and be seen as a nice neighbor and not be regarded as a nuisance to others in the anchorage or marina, and avoid local sanctions, a greywater holding tank is pretty much an operational requirement similar to using silencers on generators and not blowing the tubes of steamboat boilers while dockside in Monaco during the Grand Prix.

Which will overburden the pumping stations holding tanks and prompt new legislation for grant money to upgrade the pumpng stations which will require more money which will lead to what will amount to a "grey water tax".
I think it is inevitable though.

Then you can plumb your showers into the blackwater tank and connect the blackwater shore connection to the marina sewage connection and be in compliance.

They don't say you have to have a graywater tank, they say you can't discharge graywater into their marina.