Clean Boating Effort in California

California Coastal Commission Clean and Green Boating Campaign

Aug 4, 2008

Choose Less Toxic Cleaners Poster, California Clean and Green Campaign

Clean boating has a friend in the California Coastal Commission with its Clean and Green Boating Campaign led by California Department of Boating and Waterways.

Recreational boating is popular in California, with its extensive coast, river, and lake waters combined with some 965,000 registered vessels. Initial efforts with starting a clean boating campaign began in 1997 and have continued to grow since its inception into California's Clean and Green Boating Program.

Components of the California Clean and Green Campaign

California's clean boating effort is divided into three distinct project categories that are concerned with research, public education, and technical assistance services.

Research Activities - The Clean and Green Campaign has been involved in clean boating evaluation, surveys of vessel maintenance practices, study of educational techniques used to motivate boaters, developing tools to support local efforts, and the engineering of required facilities
Public Education - Efforts are made to provide educational and outreach materials to boaters and train volunteer instructors that can support the program's local educational efforts
Technical Assistance - Assistance is provided to marinas and local clean boating groups to help them further public education goals and install important environmental service infrastructure for boats

Clean and Green offers boaters useful information on environmentally friendly boat maintenance practices, reducing the discharge of gray water, lowering the use of hazardous substances, and eliminating marine debris. The campaign even has a top ten list boating tips list published on its website.

Clean Boating Public Outreach

One of the major contributions made by the Clean and Green Boating Campaign has been developing materials to support the public outreach efforts of the Coastal Commission. The Campaign has put together a dockwalker program that trains volunteers which are able to distribute education materials and talk to boaters at their local marinas. Numerous signs, posters, newsletters, booklets, and resource toolkits have been produced and published by the campaign. Other outreach efforts include the use of websites like coast4u, publication of tidebooks, and use of a GIS (geographic information system) database displaying California marinas and their available environmental service facilities.

Pollution Prevention Networking

The California Clean Boating Network (CCBN) is another example of the California Coastal Commission outreach efforts to promote clean boating. Its goal is to allow regional boating businesses, boating groups, natural resource agencies, and local governments to collaborate in efforts to reduce boating related pollution and improve educational methods.

Boaters living in California that are interested in promoting good marine stewardship should consider becoming a volunteer dockwalker for the clean and green campaign or join their regional chapter of the clean boating network.

The copyright of the article Clean Boating Effort in California in Green/Clean Boating is owned by Alan Sorum. Permission to republish Clean Boating Effort in California in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.