From Providence Journal

Newport Harbor gets 3rd pump-out vessel
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, August 11, 2004

BY RICHARD SALIT
Journal Staff Writer

NEWPORT -- A little bathroom humor -- OK, a lot of bathroom humor -- proved perfectly appropriate yesterday as officials gathered on a local pier to announce the debut of a commercial vessel for pumping septic waste out of other boats.

"We're all here for a crappy reason -- so to speak," Emily Bockian Landsburg, a partner in DownWind Dockside Services, began, tongue firmly in cheek.

Bockian Landsburg spoke while standing under sunny skies at the end of King Park's Stone Pier, the gleaming white 25-foot boat tied to a float. Since the vessel had yet to be christened, Bockian Landsburg invited the group of city and state officials to jot down fitting names on a piece of cardboard.

Among the suggestions: Entremanure, Floater, Poo Bear and Merdemaid. One wag suggested a moniker that perfectly weds Bellevue Avenue's high-brow French seaside estates and the scatalogical humor of the day: Chateau sur merde.

The boat's below-deck tank can hold 500 gallons of waste, which is then transferred to a municipal pump-out on Long Wharf. The city, responding to water pollution sanctions imposed by the state, built the pump-out last year for about $10,000.