Recommendations for managing the Grass Island dock
Published 6:02 pm, Tuesday, July 9, 2013
On June 13, a floating fortune called Louisa from Watch Hill, a two-masted teak and stainless steel ketch, was parked at the Grass Island main dock. The caretaker on board said the owner had rented our dock through Saturday, June 15. I don't know how long it had been sitting there before June 13. The Louisa was so big that no other boat could use the dock.
In the past, on three-day weekends, the main dock has been similarly alienated from town use by a mega-yacht. This is particularly against the interests and rights of town residents who on such weekends need a safe place to load and unload their families, especially their young children, and groceries, pump out the holding tank and take on water. The town should not deny the use of the dock to town residents during the day and especially during three-day weekends.
I think it was in 2009 that Department of Parks and Recreation transferred the pump-out equipment from the main dock where it had been for years and was of easy access to the inner dock southwest of the main dock whose shortness and menace by protruding propeller blades make it impossible for big boats and difficult for small boats. Boaters want to pump out their sewage. They do not want to dump it in the water. If our town government puts the pump-out in an easily accessible place the water will be cleaner. If they make it difficult to pump out, the water will be dirtier.
Recently in Greenwich waters the Carl Linne, a 106-foot cutter bursting with many days of accumulated sewage in its holding tank needed to pump out. It and numerous much smaller boats cannot squeeze into the tiny inner dock where the pump-out equipment is now situated. That boat had to make desperate calls to Norwalk and Huntington, N.Y., to beg a pump-out boat to come over and relieve it of its sewage. Boats that cannot access the Grass Island pump-out, the only pump-out station in Greenwich, and cannot get a pump-out boat to empty their holding tank will dump the contents of their tanks in the water. This pollution is as inevitable as a law of physics: people on board will continue exercising their bodily functions and the holding tank can only hold so much.
I ask myself, why would they alienate the main dock and make it more difficult to pump out? I can only come up with the answer that this policy causes more money to flow into the Parks and Rec budget. It is my understanding that dock rental fees go to Parks and Rec, not into the general fund. If this is the case, Parks and Rec by removing the pump-out equipment from the main dock frees up rental space and collects the rents. Instead of calling it Parks and Rec, maybe we should call it Parks and Rent. Even if the general fund gets the rental fees, this is a pro-pollution policy of commercializing town property. In effect, by making pump out more difficult to get rental fees, Parks and Rec is selling our water to be used as a toilet.
How does fee generation relate to transferring the pump-out station to the dock of lesser accessibility? If the pump-out remained at the main dock and that dock was encumbered by a plutocrat's vessel, residents would not be able to access the pump-out and would complain. Transferring the pump-out equipment from the main dock to the inner dock frees up rental property at the main dock for Parks and Rec and heads off complaints from small boat owners who can pump out at the inner dock.
But the main dock does not belong to Parks and Rec as a revenue source, it belongs to the residents for their enjoyment, safety and sanitation. If the town wants to apply a commercial policy to its property, perhaps it should rent out Town Hall and move the public employees to cheaper offices in Port Chester, N.Y.
If Parks and Rec wants to target town property for rent collection, why not rent out the Grass Island slips for winter storage? This used to be done. It is currently done in the Mianus River and at Grass Island by the Greenwich Boat and Yacht Club. These slips just sit there empty every winter. People would like to use them.
Based on the above, I would like Parks and Rec to respond to the following recommendations:
- Allow transients to rent the main dock only from sunset to sunrise; no day-long rentals and no multi-day rentals; our town dock is not a parking lot for the affluent.
- All rental fees to go into the general fund.
- Return the pump-out equipment to the main dock.
- Rent out the Grass Island slips for winter storage.
Gerrit Argento lives in Greenwich.