Plying the Sound while preventing pollution in the water and air ONE-OF-A-KIND SOLAR-ELECTRIC POWERED PUMP-OUT VESSEL HOLDS PROMISE FOR TRANSFORMING BOATING By Michael A. Pascucilla Michael A. Pascucilla, director/CEO of the East Shore District Health Department, stands on the bow of the solar- electric pump-out boat. Photo: Peter Hvizdak continued on inside back cover 4 Spring/Summer 2020 • 19 rowing up in Connecticut on the coastal SOLAR-ELECTRIC PUMP-OUT BOAT BY THE NUMBERS waters of Long Island Sound, I have childhood memories of clamming, fishing, Gcrabbing, boating, water skiing and jumping off the jetties and piers with my friends. I truly feel 1.5LBS 17.0LBS privileged and humbled to have had this special carbon dioxide emissions VS carbon dioxide emissions experience. Fondly I remember how my “old school” per pumpout of per pumpout of Italian grandmother would send me to the shore to solar-electric boat gasoline powered boat collect a seafood bouquet of crustaceans to put over a bowl of homemade pasta with garlic bread for our traditional family Sunday dinner. Yummy! SQ FT 21size of solar panels Today, I still enjoy the same activities on the Sound with my wife, children and friends in the eastern Connecticut shoreline town of Guilford. As I am well-traveled, I can say with confidence that we truly motors2 have one of the best tidal estuaries in the world. Once called the “American Mediterranean” and more recently described as “The Urban Sea,” Long Island 8-10HOURS Length of time the solar-electric boat Photo: Peter Hvizdak Sound is one of North America’s most developed yet can travel on a single full charge, cruising at 4-6 knots (4.6 to 6.9 mph) biologically diverse waterways. As a local director of public health and a professor of public health at Southern Connecticut State $ $ University (SCSU) and lecturer of epidemiology at 3,220 5annual,3 operating7 cost0 annual operating cost VS Yale University, the health implications of water of solar-electric of gasoline powered quality and climate change — including diseases and pump-out boat pump-out boat natural disasters — are among my top priorities. My staff and I at the East Shore District Health Department, which serves East Haven, Branford and small, experimental pilot electric pump-out vessels existed. North Branford, work diligently every day to protect our With their support and funding, I worked with my staff communities and their treasured seashores, as do our on this multi-year project to research, design and build colleagues in other shoreline towns. We regularly test the waters the world’s first full-sized solar-electric pump-out vessel. of the Sound and collaborate with many partners to ensure the beaches are safe to swim in, and that its prized shellfish, finfish We had lots of partners! One of the main ones was Pilot’s Point and emerging products such as kelp are safe to eat. Marina in Westbrook, which assisted in the design and construction of the first-of-its-kind solar-electric pump-out In 2014, our office decided to convert our aging automobile boat. Together with Pilot’s Point, we created a new aluminum fleet to hybrid and electric vehicles through a Connecticut boat hull from scratch, intending to maximize energy Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT efficiency and onboard battery capacity without sacrificing DEEP) grant opportunity. Around the same time, our maneuverability and ease of use. The result is a vessel that pump-out boat needed to be replaced. For those unacquainted operates just like a gasoline-powered pump-out boat, making with the term, a pump-out boat empties human waste out of the new technology easy to adopt by pump-out boat operators the holding tanks of recreational vessels, then carries it to accustomed to gasoline-powered machines. shore for treatment so that raw sewage is not discharged into open waters. Pump-out boats provide a vital service for A CT DEEP Clean Vessel Act grant covered 75 percent of the mitigating the environmental impacts of boating by managing $200,000 cost. Our local public health department engaged the waste generated on recreational vessels. But their operation local businesses and communities to help raise the other — just like the operation of any gasoline-powered boat — $50,000 as 25 percent matching funds. Undergraduate interns contributes to climate change, ozone depletion and water from SCSU assisted in the project, which included pollution. community/business fundraisers, working with local community foundations, creating a GoFundMe page and This presented a conflict – a vessel designed to prevent holding raffles. Although this was the first time our local pollution was itself a contributor. So I pitched a conceptual health department hosted fundraisers, the experience was fun idea to build a solar-electric powered pump-out boat and the support and response from our communities was to our partners at CT DEEP. Kathryn Brown, our state amazing. liaison, not only embraced the idea, but championed it to federal funders at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as To name the boat, we engaged our elementary schools in a a potentially groundbreaking project. At the time, only boat-naming contest. Students in the winning class took a 20 • Wrack Lines:: A Connecticut Sea Grant Publication field trip to Bruce & Johnson’s Marina has introduced much-needed is a 90 percent improvement over the in Branford to visit the vessel they had technological advancement to the worlds conventional standard, a quantum leap named “Solar Shark.” They also received of recreational and commercial boating. in sustainable boating technology that a pizza party paid for by the health There are some 12 million recreational has the potential to help transform department. boats in the United States alone, and recreational and commercial boating their combined use emits at into an industry that contributes least as much carbon dioxide minimally to climate change. We have per year as the operation of 1.3 just finalized the research study with million cars. The health district’s Yale and plan to submit the manuscript new technology is partially about the findings to an international autonomous — power generated journal for future publication. by the onboard solar panels meets much of the energy needs of the Since Connecticut began making boat. The rest of the electricity is pump-out boats a regular part of life supplied by recharging the battery on the Sound in 2000, more than 8 through a land-based hookup million gallons have been extracted from connected to the main power grid. recreational vessels and kept out of the estuary. In its 2019 inaugural boating To understand the environmental season, the solar electric pump-out boat These students from Grove J. Tuttle Elementary School in East impact of the technology it was used for 1,023 pump-outs keeping Haven were part of the class that came up with the winning name developed, the health district 19,956 gallons of marine waste out of for the boat, “Solar Shark” as part of a contest for local schools. Photo: Nathan Hughart/The Courier commissioned a study to analyze the Sound. Its performance has exceeded the carbon dioxide emissions — our expectations. Getting recharged Since then, we have continued to focus known as the carbon footprint — of by the solar panels while underway, our public health educational efforts the new solar-electric pump-out boat the electric motor rarely drops below with our schools to promote this compared to its gasoline-powered 75 percent to 50 percent full power. program and the importance of equivalent. The study, conducted in everybody’s role in protecting our water, collaboration with Dr. Robert Dubrow Recreational boating is not an activity air and reducing climate change and students at the Yale University that many individuals might think emissions, especially among our School of Public Health, tabulated the about when they consider how to children and youth. But marinas, carbon footprint of different kinds of reduce worldwide greenhouse gas restaurants, grassroots environmental pump-out boats over the course of their emissions. Nonetheless, the boating organizations, fisheries and shellfish entire lifetimes, from construction to use industry has a considerable impact on industries, residents and visitors alike to disposal and recycling. The students climate change, and directly impacts also have an interest in how the solar- found that a conventional gasoline- the world’s fragile and valuable marine electric vessel protects our waterways, powered boat emits about 17 pounds ecosystems. The health district’s projects so we are working with these groups, of carbon dioxide for each holding in sustainable pump-out boat technology too. Our logo sums it up: “Clean water tank it pumps out — about as much represent outstanding examples of the is everyone’s business.” carbon dioxide as is released by driving creative and multifaceted approach a car with an average fuel efficiency that future leaders need to take What’s innovative about our vessel is of 25 miles per gallon for 23 miles. when combatting climate change. that it uses ecologically friendly electric motors and solar panels to perform the The new solar-electric boat, however, The solutions that the agency has essential functions of a pump-out boat emits as little as 1.5 pounds of developed — including the research without the greenhouse gas emissions carbon dioxide per pump-out. This it led with Yale, the unique academic- associated public-private partnerships it formed with using a with Pilot’s Point conventional Marina and other internal organizations, fossil fuel and the solar- combustion electric boating engine. In technology doing so, the it engineered East Shore — have the District potential to Health Department Left, the pump-out boat is lowered into the water at Bruce & Johnson's Marina in Branford on May 5 for the start of the boat- ing season.