Assistant Harbormaster Allen Ruff pilots the city's pumpout boat in 2019. As of July 1, it's now illegal for boaters to dump sewage in nearly all Anne Arundel County waters. (Paul W. Gillespie / Capital Gazette)

David Barker did not live to see Anne Arundel County waters become a federal No Discharge Zone, but were it not for his advocacy, it might still be legal for boats to dump sewage into the Severn River.

Barker, founding president of the Back Creek Conservancy and a former president of the Severn River Association, died in May at age 77 after contracting the coronavirus. Six weeks later, all navigable rivers in the county, with the exception of the Patuxent River bordering Baltimore County, became a federally recognized “No Discharge Zone.”

The Annapolis City Council honored Barker last week with a citation for his environmental advocacy and praised the 25-year Annapolis resident for coordinating local efforts to push for the change. The federal Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Natural Resources made the policy official July 1.

“David Barker was the point person,” Mayor Gavin Buckley said in a recent interview. “He was the hard charger.”

In Barker, Buckley found a kindred spirit who loved the water and was willing to help steer the city through the local, state and federal hoops necessary to have the NDZ become official. As a young sailor who arrived in the states via sailboat from Australia, Buckley was surprised by the lax regulations for maritime sewage.

“I was shocked to learn that the whole Chesapeake Bay is not a no discharge zone,” Buckley said. “Can you imagine what happens when some of these tankers release their bilges into the Chesapeake Bay?”

Gross. Actually, discharge of untreated sewage is forbidden within 3 miles of U.S. shores. Establishing an NDZ ensures that not even sewage treated with onboard systems — which usually kill pathogens but not much else — can be dumped in Anne Arundel waters.

“The NDZ designation will help the city and county close a gap in their efforts to attain their Chesapeake Bay pollution reduction goals, which focus on the reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus,” said Jacqueline Guild, Annapolis deputy city manager for Resilience and Sustainability, in a statement announcing the policy. “Current onboard treatment systems do not reduce these nutrients that stimulate plant and algae growth, which in turn, leads to less oxygen in the water for aquatic life.”

A five-way coalition applied to the EPA for the designation in May 2020. The Severn River Association (which merged with Barker’s Back Creek Conservancy), Anne Arundel County, and the city of Annapolis, DNR and Maryland Department of the Environment co-signed the bid to become the fourth NDZ in Maryland. (The others are the Chester River and its tributaries, bays near Assateague Island and Ocean City, and Herring Bay, an Anne Arundel County bay that received the designation in 2002.)

“We are one of the few cities on the [Chesapeake] Bay that have pushed for this,” Buckley said.

Along the way, the city invited two harbormasters from Rhode Island where NDZ’s were already in place to speak with local boaters. The EPA also held public comment sessions and conducted a review of area pump-out stations that can accommodate both commercial and recreational vessels. The city of Annapolis has a dozen, the U.S. Naval Academy maintains two and there are more than 30 elsewhere in the county.

The Annapolis harbormaster’s office also owns and operates a pump-out boat that makes floating house calls for just $5 a tank, up to 50 gallons, and 10 cents per gallon for each additional gallon. Those rates also apply at traditional pump-out stations. Costs are offset, in part, by motorboat fuel taxes and the Maryland Waterway Improvement Fund. The boat is in service 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday from May 15 through mid-November.

Despite the low cost of pumping out, there are still boaters who are tempted to empty their sewage into the Severn and surrounding waterways.

“We need to focus on education,” said Rob Savidge, a Democratic Ward 7 alderman who chairs the council’s Environmental Matters Committee.

The city had hoped to launch a “Pump Don’t Dump” campaign on social media, but unfortunately a New Hampshire concrete company trademarked a similar phrase. Now the city is looking at other language that can be posted everywhere from Instagram to signs on channel markers that boaters will see as they approach City Dock.

The policy will be enforced by the harbormaster, MDE employees, DNR police and the U.S. Coast Guard. First-offenders will receive warnings, but fines can be as high as $10,000, according to state regulations.

There has been talk of naming the pump-out boat after Barker, Savidge noted. But even without the tongue-in-cheek honor, “His legacy will last a very long time,” the alderman said.