Washington -- Millions of Great Lakes boaters will need to get water discharge permits from the Environmental Protection Agency by the end of September unless Congress or the courts take action.

Failure to obtain the new EPA paperwork could result in daily fines of up to $32,500, says Republican Rep. Steve LaTourette of Bainbridge Township, who wants legislation to throw out the new permit requirement.

A federal court ruled in 2006 that the Clean Water Act requires the EPA to issue permits to recreational boaters for incidental water discharges, like water sloshing over the deck, bilge or engine cooling water. The EPA appealed the ruling but hasn't received a decision in the case, so it plans to unveil its new permitting proposal at the end of May, an EPA spokeswoman said.
 

LaTourette calls it "ridiculous" to regulate incidental water discharges, and he predicts the permits would cause chaos.

"If you thought getting a passport last summer was a nightmare, just wait until the federal government tries to issue more than 13 million boating permits by the end of September," said LaTourette, who noted it's already illegal for boats to discharge garbage and other pollutants.

Several bills have been introduced to address the problem. As the House of Representatives debated a Coast Guard funding bill on Thursday, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar of Minnesota assured LaTourette he'll act quickly on a stand-alone bill to overturn the permitting requirement.

The Coast Guard bill the House adopted in a 395-7 vote would require commercial ships to install ballast water treatment systems to control the spread of invasive species. Interlopers like zebra mussels arrived in the Great Lakes on commercial ships that used ballast water to level themselves at sea and discharged foreign water into the lakes.

The bill will create a national ballast water standard to avoid a patchwork of state laws. Until treatment standards are enacted next year, all vessels entering the Great Lakes and other ports will be required to rinse and empty their ballast tanks on the high seas before entering a U.S. port, said LaTourette, who wrote the ballast-water language.