Best Available Technologies of Sewage Collecting for Boat Tourism

Small boat ports located in the Baltic Sea are fascinating for both national and international visitors; many of them, explore the area using small leisure boats. As members of HELCOM, the countries around the Baltic Sea aim to reduce the release of latrine sewage from boats into the sea. Moreover, the possibility of emptying latrine sewage from leisure boats can be considered a fundamental service for boaters, which, when neglected, has a crucial impact on boaters’ comfort. However, this service suffers from lack of easily accessible and functional sewage pump-out stations, non-harmonized sewage collecting equipment and  lack of easily accessible information regarding location and functionality of pump-out stations.

To provide boating tourists with better sewage collecting services, BATSECO-BOAT aims to improve the capacity and service level of latrine sewage collection in small boat ports in Estonia, Finland and Sweden. Within the project framework,a strategy containing cross-regional guidelines to inform decision-making on this issue  will be developed. This strategy will be based on information about i) institutional landscape and legislation, ii) traffic flow of leisure boats, iii) operation costs, iv) best available technology for waste handling, v) analysis of latrine sewage, and vi) estimation of sewage flows.

Digital tools and guidelines will be developed, informing local investment and the three investment packages, leading to improved services in altogether twenty Central Baltic ports. An important project output will be a document providing guidelines and lessons learnt, which can be used to replicate investments in other regions after the project completion. The project will also conduct a scoping study to create a digital map, showing the network of functional sewage collection services. This map will facilitate cross-border mobility across the Central Baltic region.