A Free App Points Champlain Boaters to the Nearest Legal Place to Dump Sewage

Recreational boaters on Lake Champlain have a free tool for finding somewhere to legally empty their vessel’s holding tank — and avoid the illegal, water-fouling alternative of discharging raw sewage into the lake.

The app, Pumpout Nav: Marina Pumpout Finder, is available on iOS and Android. It uses a phone’s GPS to show the closest sewage pumpout stations as a map or list, along with each facility’s operational status, cost, hours, and exact location within the marina. Users can also log pumpouts, save favorite stations, and report broken or non-functioning equipment — the kind of crowd-sourced signal that tells the next boater whether it’s worth the trip.

The stakes are regulatory as well as environmental: dumping untreated sewage into the lake is illegal, and boat waste is one of several pollution sources — alongside fuel, detergents, and marine debris — that boating can contribute to Champlain.

Lake Champlain was the first water body outside California to join the app, which was built by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership under a federal Clean Vessel Act grant. Its Vermont availability runs through a partnership among the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, Lake Champlain Sea Grant, UVM Extension, SUNY-Plattsburgh, and Ecom Enterprises, Inc.