1. Adopt best management practices (BMP) which have proven to work in other marinas, are cost effective , easy to do , based on existing technology, and can help protect clean water.
2. Once BMP's have been selected, train your staff so everyone knows what is expected.
3. Once staff is on board the BMP program, begin to educate customers and solicit their help in making the marina and its water better and cleaner.

SANDING & PAINTING BMP

1. Use dustless sanders and require all customers and outside venders to comply with the marina BMPs.
2. Use drop cloths or filter cloth beneath the hull to collect sanding dust and paint drops.
3. Encourage hull work indoors or under cover where possible; but discourage dockside sanding and painting over the water; if allowed have boaters stretch a tarp between side of boat and dock to catch anything falling.
4. Control inventory and reduce waste by buying only as much as is needed.
5. Minimize the use of solvents or switch to water soluble choices.
6. Before discarding paint cans, remove the top and let any paint residue dry and harden.

FUELING BOATS

1. Create an emergency spill response plan for containment and cleanup.
2. Install automatic shut off systems on fuel nozzles.
3. Display fueling safety and clean operation checklist at each pump.
4. Train employees to give information and direction to customers before they begin fueling.
5. Provide absorbent pads to contain over spill and excess fuels.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

1. Provide easily accessible recycling facilities for glass, newspapers, aluminum, plastics, batteries; provide numerous, well-marked trash receptacles.
2. Train staff to provide clean boating information and set good examples.
3. Encourage staff, tenants and contractors to follow these principles for cleaning activities:
   • Less toxic or caustic materials and use less of it.
   • Contain and clean up!
   • Bulk purchases minimize waste.
   • Buy in reusable containers, promoting minimal packaging among suppliers, minimizing packaging on products sold.
   • Encourage customers to supply their own containers.
   • Counsel customers to buy only what is needed for immediate use.
   • Avoid the use or sale of anything described as being 'disposable'; encouraging the use of long-life products.

CONTAIN RUNOFF FROM WORK AREA

1. Where possible, minimize paved surfaces next to the bulkhead to allow rain to soak into the ground instead of running into the water; installed lawn and garden buffers along the bulkhead to act as natural filters and add beauty to the facility; each year fix up a section of the facility with new landscaping to reduce runoff.
2. Use the earth as much as possible as a natural filtration system with crushed stone paving, sand filters, wet ponds, grassy swales (low areas), traps to catch solids from runoff.
3. Do as much boat and hull repairs and maintenance work indoors where it is not subject to rain and runoff; for outdoor work, designate specific work areas away from water and insist on everyone following your best management practice.
4. Install simple oil traps with absorption pillow and debris filters between the work areas and the bulkhead to protect the water quality.
   
   
   
   
   A nationwide program of the Marine Environmental Education Foundation
   Boating is good clean fun. Let's keep it that way.