More than 50 Fontana Lake boathouse owners met recently to learn and share information regarding the growing concern over raw sewage flowing into the lake.

Peter Whittaker, an environmental health specialist with the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, told the 50 people attending the Feb. 22 meeting that they were breaking new ground.

“North Carolina has laws that say it’s illegal to put waste in water, but no one has dealt with it,” Whittaker said.

Swain County commissioner and lake user’s association chairman David Monteith, along with Swain economic development director Jason Walls, facilitated the meeting. Linda White of the Swain County Health department, and Art Schettini of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) also spoke to the group.

Walls said it was the intent of the county to create an enforceable and consistent ordinance that would not be a hardship on boathouse owners.

“We want a working system where we are accountable for our waste and know it’s not going into Fontana Lake,” Walls said.

Schettini said the issue called for a change of perspective. He noted that area lakes were becoming more and more crowded and that use patterns were changing. He said that marinas used to be “a place to get gas and a bucket of minnows,” and the lake was where someone came for a day of fishing or swimming.
Today marinas offer a multitude of services and people come for long weekends and extended stays on boathouses. With the crowding come the waste problems, Schettini said.

Norris Lake is a TVA lake in Tennessee that has a waste ordinances in place. Schettini said that in a seven-month study at one marina which serves 78 boats, 39,000 gallons of human waste were disposed of properly.

The Tennessee study only took into account “black water,” or actual sewage. According to Whittaker, North Carolina law includes “gray water” (water from showers, sinks, clothes washers, etc.) in its definition of sewage.

Whittaker said that a preliminary survey recorded 146 boathouses on the Swain County side of Fontana Lake. He said that simple, visual inspections from outside the boathouses revealed that 55 of them showed some type of direct discharge into the lake. While some of the discharges were surely for gray water, some were literally outhouses sitting over the lake, Whittaker said.

White said that she during the time she has been with the Swain County Health Department she has received numerous complaints from lake users. She said the effluent generally stays near the surface. Children swimming around the boathouses could be at risk from bacteria, according to White.

Bobby Medford, a Haywood County resident who keeps his boat at the Alarka boat dock, said he thinks everyone agrees it is best to keep fecal matter out of the water. He said Alarka already had a program in place.

Tony Sherrill, owner of Alarka boat dock, said he had been studying the issue for more than five years. Sherrill said he has been on the lake for 24 years and has seen problems increase as the lake becomes more crowded.

He said most people want to keep the lake clean - the question is how. Sherrill partnered with the TVA about three and a half years ago to try and find a solution. He said TVA helped with some surplus materials and a little bit of grant money.

Sherrill consulted with a marina operator from Lake Norris who has been pumping sewage from boathouses for 10 years. Sherrill has a vessel with a 250-gallon storage tank. He goes to the boathouses at his dock and pumps their wastewater into his tank. He discharges the wastewater from his tank into a 3,000 gallon septic with 1,200 feet of drain line at his marina. The septic system, designed by White, will handle 600 gallons of wastewater per day.

Many boathouse owners were concerned about specifics, especially the size of wastewater tanks. Monteith said no formal plan had been drawn up - that this (the first public discussion of the issue) was more of a fact-finding mission. He said the county would go back to the state with the concerns and information gathered from this meeting. He said that another public meeting would be scheduled within the next two months. Monteith emphasized that there would be plenty of time for compliance once an ordinance was in place.

Sherrill said the meeting had been a success, and he isn’t too concerned about size regulations. “Any system that doesn’t go in the lake will work. I’ve learned that there are at least 900 different configurations for tanks,” he said.

 

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