NDZ proponents include Save the Bay and other citizen environmental groups, the state's Department of Environmental Management (DEM),  the Rhode Island Marine Trades Association (which includes marina operators), and fishers.  This spring DEM formally requested the designation from EPA  Region 1 in Boston with backing, says John Torgan, Narragansett BayKeeper for Save the Bay, from ``all the major stakeholders" and with ``strong public support."  Rhode Island's request encompasses a three-mile band of open ocean.

If EPA approves, the only legal way that a boater with a fixed toilet aboard would be able to get rid of sewage in or near Rhode Island would be to visit a pumpout station, of which there are more than 20 along the 25-mile Narragansett Bay, or, under abnormal circumstances, rendezvous with a pumpout vessel.  It would become illegal to discharge waste from Coast Guard-approved Marine Sanitation Devices (MSDs) that treat sewage on board fully enough, at least as far as the fecal coliform bacteria count is concerned, to surpass EPA standards by a wide margin.

The pumpout-only solution ``may not make sense everywhere," says Torgan, ``but for us it's a no-brainer.  The Bay has suffered shellfish closings that could only have resulted from boat discharges."  Even the higher-quality MSDs do not kill viruses, he adds, and even when the systems are well maintained they allow the release of small quantities of nutrients that are harmful to aquatic life.  Tolerating outflows of ``partially treated sewage with no controls," he concludes, is ``unacceptable."   Said marina manager J. Michael Keyworth in the Providence Journal-Bulletin:  ``The Great Lakes have been designated a `no discharge zone' since the early `80s.  In my conversations with marina operators there, they say, `No problem. Just get on with it'."

 In what Torgan calls an ``unpleasant surprise" that surfaced late in the process, Cruising World magazine and BOAT-US, the publication of the Boat Owners Association of America, recently offered heated counter-arguments.  Agreeing that zero-discharge rules should apply to enclosed or congested waterbodies with little or no tidal flush, they said that pumpout-only regulations elsewhere might actually encourage illegal dumping of sewage and for many other reasons prove to be counterproductive.  Moreover, contended Editorial Director Bernadette Bernon in Cruising World's May 1998 issue, ``modern onboard treatment technology works as well or better than the pumpout method."

Noting that existing water-quality laws and regulations forbid raw waste discharge from boats and set high standards for onboard treatment systems, pumpout-only opponents feel that adequate controls over boat sewage are already in place.  They fear that if the Rhode Island application is approved  the NDZ concept will spread to other states with less adequate pumpout infrastructure.  The result, they claim, would be hardship for boaters, more cheating, and the possible failure of overburdened shorefront treatment systems.  Fumed Bernon: ``Faulty legislation that has been swaddled in political correctness by those who have not done their homework is now taking aim at your boat, as well as the environment."  She and others who oppose the statewide ban claim to have the same goal of cleaner water as do those on the other side of the issue.