Environmental Resources

Most harbors on the East Coast are no-discharge zones. Heads and holding tanks are not to be emptied, but there is an easy and legal way to empty your holding tank.

The Long Island Sound - Soundkeeper with financial assistance from federal grants, CT DEP, NY DEC, its members, utility companies, marinas and local communities, provides a boat pumpout service utilizing a fleet of four pumpout boats covering the area from New Rochelle to Westport.

This service is available from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Wednesdays - Sundays. You do not have to be on your boat for it to be pumped out.

To make a pumpout request, you can:

1.   Hail the Soundkeeper pumpout boat on Channel 77.

2.   Telephone the Soundkeeper office at 1-800-933-SOUND.

3.   Make an online pumpout request on the Soundkeeper website at http://www.soundkeeper.org/ . You fill out a reusable request form on the website. Shortly after submitting the form, you will receive an email confirmation. The boat operators download these requests prior to their daily runs. This is the preferred method for obtaining this service.

The Soundkeeper website also contains a downloadable 30 page Soundkeeper Clean Boater Guide that contains useful information on how to minimize your boating activities' environmental impact on LIS.

For very good information about the location of pumpout services in northeastern US states, please click here.