The National Clean Marina Workshop is scheduled for September 25-27, 2002, at the Mystic Hilton Hotel in Mystic, Connecticut. This first-of-its-kind workshop is designed to produce, through consensus building with key constituencies and partners, a national framework for implementing the Environmental Protection Agencys (EPAs) marinas and recreational boating management measures. The framework will build from the experience of current state clean-marina programs; provide assistance to local, state and national partnerships to create, and deliver innovative clean-marina programs; and provide an outreach mechanism for extending the national non-point-source pollution guidance for marinas and recreational boating facilities.
The objectives of the workshop are to:
–Systematically harvest the experience of existing clean marina programs so that it can be applied to emerging clean marina programs.
–Showcase current clean-marina programs, with particular attention given to the diversity of approaches taken by the different programs.
–Create an opportunity for current and future implementers of clean-marina programs to shape a set of common principles, approaches, tools and techniques.
–Encourage the application and replication of clean-marina programs nationwide through new innovations and replication of existing experience.
–And catalyze the existing network of participating national, state and local organizations, businesses, agencies, and individuals to promote clean-water practices by the marina industry on federal lands, other public lands, and in private facilities.
The workshop will begin at 2 p.m. on September 25 and end at noon on September 27. The workshop is a post-conference opportunity for those attending the annual States Organization For Boating Access (SOBA), which concludes on the 25th in Mystic. Funding for the development of this workshop is being provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Water.
For more workshop information, visit the website of the Marine Environmental Education Foundation (MEEF) at www.meef.org or contact workshop coordinators Dave White, New York Sea Grant (e-mail: dgw9@cornell.edu), or Mark Amaral, Marine Environmental Education Foundation (e-mail: meef@meef.org).
