Mystery sheens on the water are a perpetual problem in many harbors, Haines’ included.
Often, when those sheens can be traced back to their point of origin, harbormaster Henry Pollan said, it’s fuel or oil in someone’s bilge and the water level gets high enough that it gets pumped out of the boat and into the water.
Now, the harbor has a new tool to help boat owners clean up their bilges. It’s called the Bilge Licker and it functions as an automated oil and water separator.
“It has a thing like a tongue that licks the oil out,” said Takshanuk Watershed Council executive director Derek Poinsette. “It basically runs an absorbent material and…like a rope and there’s a motor with a pulley at the tip. It dips this rope down into the bilge water, and then wrings it out into a collection, like a bucket.”
The watershed council bought the bilge for about $1,600 and donated it to the borough where it will now live at the Small Boat Harbor and be available for anyone to use.
Poinsette said he’s been thinking about buying one for about a year after longtime fishermen Brent Crowe approached him more than a year ago saying he thought it would be a good thing for Takshanuk to purchase and loan out to users.
For boat owners, Poinsette said it addresses a perpetual struggle of what to do when old engines leak into the bilge or a repair-gone-wrong causes a mess. “You have to go in there and suck it out manually with one of those hand pumps and then you’ve got this oil water. And, if you have a big boat, there’s just always oily water out there that you have to kind of manage,” he said.
The Bilge Licker was delivered to the harbor on Wednesday and Pollan said he’s particularly excited to see it used, as it’s another step toward getting the Haines Harbor Alaska Clean Harbors certified – a process he said he’s been working on for more than a year.
That’s a certification that requires everything from adequate liquid and chemical hazardous waste management, bins for pet waste, recycling availability, signs informing boaters and staff of harbor environmental policies, a policy addressing abandoned and derelict vessels, stormwater management, boater education and fishing gear disposal, and a harbor pumpout facility.
That last one is high on the list, Pollan said.
Right now, the pumpout is broken but he hasn’t had the staff or time to fix it.