EPA Boat Tax Information

Portsmouth Boat Club

Originally Established 1905

Get active or get taxed: House Bill H.R. 2550 and Senate Bill S. 2067, Recreational Boating Act of 2007, is out there. The bill is designed to provide recreational boats with a permanent exemption to a permit requirement being designed by the EPA. In a nutshell, the EPA could require you to have a permit to wash your boat by qualifying the run-off from hosing off your craft as "discharge". Needless to say, such a permit would not come cheaply. The way things stand, if the recreational boats' exemption from the permit is not passed, the EPA will develop a discharge permit for all boats, i.e. those tankers in the harbor and you. Get on it - email, call, and otherwise let your senators and representatives know where you stand. Do it now, because if things go as expected, there will be a very short public comment period. For details see BoatU.S. Magazine, March issue, page 7. You can use the web by going to your Senators' websites and following email prompts from there - Senator John Warner http://warner.senate.gov and Senator Jim Webb http://webb.senate.gov The House is a bit more organized - try http://clerk.house.gov , then contact the Virginia Congressmen from there. Or, go directly to each Congressman's website and get his or her email link . The Virginia Congressmen are Thelma Drake; Bobby Scott; Randy Forbes; Eric Cantor; Robert Whittman; Virgil Goode; Bob Goodlatte; James Morgan; Rick Boucher; Frank Wolf, and Tom Davis. Both of your Senators and all of the Virginia Congressmen will have a vote on these bills. Reach out and let them know how you want to be represented.