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2017 September October Marina World

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The magazine for the marina industry

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT Compliance and service – joint drivers for pump-out installation Green, green, green is here, and here to stay, according to US company EMP Industries. Just looking at two marinas that are representative of the luxury sector in the USA tells us that the green revolution is being embraced, and that operators are doing all the necessary things to keep the environment clean. Oceans Edge Hotel Resort & Marina in Stock Island, Florida is a new marina and luxury hotel complex that opened this year. The marina installed a central vacuum system for boat sewage collection to augment its environmental impact plan and offer boaters the highest level of service available to accommodate waste removal. Oceans Edge selected a 42 gall/min (191 l/min) EMP peristaltic pump with multiple pump-out locations connected via an HDPE pipe that runs in the dock and underground. Boaters connect to a hydrant near their berth via a hose reel, which also controls the start and stop of the pump using a radio frequency remote. Nearly 1,500 miles (2,414 km) from Key West, Golden Nugget, a casino operator in Atlantic City, New Jersey, also opted last year for in-slip pump-out at the large marina it manages. Like the owners of Oceans Edge, Golden Nugget has created a destination resort, in this instance revolving around a hotel, casino and the adjacent Senator Frank S. Farley State Marina. It has long term seasonal guests, plenty of transient boat stays during the summer months, and its 15,000ft² (1,393m²) outdoor deck bar hosts a series of concerts during spring and summer that further boost demand on visitor docks and services. The marina has installed 86 pumpout hydrants and two 70 gall/min (318 l/min) Sanisailor peristaltic vacuum pumps with EMP-patented vortex hose reels with remote controls. Golden Nugget opted for greater pumping capacity to support visiting boats that Smart hose reel with radio frequency pump controls and vacuum assist installed at Oceans Edge Marina. needed pump-out. Many of these transients are on their boats intensively during the summer and many also have guests aboard every weekend from May to September. “We often think of pump-out as the ‘check in the box’ compliance service with little care placed on the importance of operating high level guest services,” says EMP president Tom Callahan. “But these two high profile multi-faceted resort style marinas emphasise the very important considerations we need to address. Boater guest profile and intensity drive key amenities, along with fundamental compliance with environmental impact requirements.” E: empsales@emp.ind Multi-use barge cleans up marina waters French company Ecotank has been spreading the word on its Multi Services barge, designed to meet growing environmental demands at French marinas. Ecotank partner Narinov (a subsidiary of the Suez Group) gave a presentation of the product in August at Port Camargue. The eco barge, described by its designers as ‘the Swiss army knife of the seas’, has been purchased by several marinas and has been in daily use since 2011 in Monaco, Cannes and St Tropez where it performs a mix of the following duties: collection of waste water, bilge water and macro-waste through its retractable net processes; towing; underwater operations such as cleaning of river and sea bed, maintenance of mooring chains etc; collecting and transporting general waste; distributing fresh water to swing moorings; treating pollution problems such as oil slicks; firefighting; cleaning of riprap; and installing nets against jellyfish. All barges can be equipped with an outboard turbine engine to make operation safer in berthing areas and help oxygenate marina waters. An electric propulsion option is being considered. E: contact@ecotank-worldwide.com 44 www.marinaworld.com - September/October 2017

Working with Nature – the PIANC initiative ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT by Esteban Biondi Marinas can be sustainable. People outside the marina industry don’t always agree; but people inside the industry don’t always build and operate marinas in a sustainable manner. While the majority of marinas pay are not followed in so many cases. significant attention to environmental WwN principles are focused on operations, often exceeding regulations, process and approach. This means improvements can be made - especially that they are part of marina design at the design stage. It is also true that, best practices and not a post-design in some cases, regulators can be overzealous, demanding environmental practices, “the process is always the verification. As I say in my consulting performance from marinas that is not same, the result is always different.” asked from other developments. Marina professionals know that there are ways to plan, build and operate marinas so that they maintain or improve ecological functions, energise the local economy, provide direct and indirect social benefits to local communities and thrive as a business. And yet, there are still marinas being built that unnecessarily destroy environmental resources, create confrontational relationships with adjacent communities or get into financial trouble due to poor planning. Developers, designers and builders often miss opportunities to make a marina more sustainable. Marina projects with undue environmental impacts or negative social impacts, sometimes struggle economically - if they get built at all - and always give the marina industry as a whole a bad reputation. PIANC - a 130-year old professional organisation dedicated to waterborne transportation infrastructure - has developed environmental guidelines and a certification of recognition programme called Working with Nature (WwN) to improve infrastructure sustainability. The principles of the WwN approach apply to waterborne infrastructure projects, including port and dredging projects as well as marinas. PIANC’s certification programme is available to all types of recreational navigation infrastructure projects. Working with Nature The Working with Nature design principles are rather simple. They would be a truism, except for the fact that they In a very simple summary, WwN identifies the fundamental project objectives and considers the site conditions from the perspective of the natural surroundings, its processes and the community, as much as from the pure technical design aspect. This approach reinforces best practice in marina design, which assumes that environmental and social issues must be integrated into the design process but at the same time not neglecting the navigational or port’s targets. Marinas offer unique opportunities to implement WwN principles to improve project value and economic performance creating win-win situations for the project developer, the environment and society. Working with Nature is different from the way some environmental impact studies are made, when a post-design verification of impacts and mitigation “patches” add little benefit to the design. WwN encourages a design process that incorporates environmental analysis before the design is advanced. As a result, the project that is used as the basis for the environmental impact study already has a reduced impact and environmental features are already part of the project. The WwN Award, being granted every four years during the PIANC World Congress, offers the opportunity to display outstanding project approaches and efforts to the marina community, as well as to the general public. Project developers and owners Esteban Biondi can advertise their project, creating positive awareness and recognition that is beneficial for marina construction and maintenance. Every marina designer is invited to submit his/her project to the WwN database (www. workingwithnature.pianc.org) as the first step to earning a WwN Certificate of Recognition and as the basis for selection for the WwN Award. Other initiatives PIANC RecCom also manages the annual Marina Excellence Design Award, but Working with Nature issues a certification of recognition to all projects that meet its requirements. Through its partnerships with ICOMIA, GMI, AMI and TYHA, PIANC RecCom supports voluntary environmental certification programmes, which are primarily focused on operations. PIANC’s Working with Nature initiative, however, is focused on the planning approach. To help identify best practices in environmental marina design, the Recreational Navigation Commission of PIANC is also developing specific and more detailed recommendations for the implementation of WwN to recreational navigation infrastructure through one of its Working Groups. Esteban L. Biondi is the chairman of PIANC RecCom and member of the Working with Nature Jury. He presently chairs a PIANC Working Group on sustainable marinas. He can be reached at ebiondi@appliedtm.com. For more information: www.pianc.org www.marinaworld.com - September/October 2017 45

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