Boaters may soon be prohibited from dumping or discharging effluent from their boats in most state waters around Martha’s Vineyard. On Monday, the state office of environmental affairs secretary Richard K. Sullivan Jr., submitted an application to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), designating most waters around Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and southern Cape Cod as a no discharge area. The area comprises 807 square miles of water.

A top regional EPA official said Wednesday that their agency may “fast track” the request and give the designation as early as sometime this summer.

The designation means that commercial boats and recreational boats would be prohibited from discharging their holding tanks, treated or untreated effluent in these waters. Only the Steamship Authority, which runs nine ferries across the state waters, is exempt until 2016. They will be allowed to discharge their treated waste in a narrow area between West Chop and Woods Hole and in the federal waters of Nantucket Sound.

“Our coastal waters are a precious natural resource, and each season we get closer to our goal of protecting all of our coastal waters from boat pollution,” said Mr. Sullivan, in a statement issued this week. “This designation would keep our marine habitats clean for wildlife and recreation like boating and swimming while protecting this significant commercial fishing and tourism economic resource.”

The designation impacts Chilmark, West Tisbury, Tisbury, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, Gosnold, Falmouth, Mashpee, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich, Chatham and Nantucket. Much of the outer waters north of Nantucket harbor, which stretch from Muskeget Island to Great Point and include Nantucket Harbor, already received the designation in 1992. This means that 96 per cent of state waters would have this designation. The outer Cape received the designation last summer.

The state submitted the application through the office of coastal zone management after a six-year processes involving 14 communities. The application required having pumpout facilities in all the major harbors. The Vineyard’s four main harbors all have pumpout facilities in place that have been in use for many years.

Ann Rodney of the EPA said there have been many players in this process, from government agencies to the private sector. Some of the final parts to the application process were hammered out at a Feb. 16 meeting at the Steamship Authority’s Hyannis office, which included harbor masters, the Steamship Authority and others, she said.

The Steamship Authority has been allowed to continue to discharge in the waters because of the lengthy process of retrofitting each of the authority’s ferries to a new septic system involving freshwater rather than saltwater. Vineyard Haven, Woods Hole, Hyannis and Nantucket, the four ports where these ferries tie up, will also have to do new construction to install the necessary facilities so that the ferries can discharge their effluent for treatment in local wastewater facilities. All these changes are subject to town approval.

In a drydock schedule already adopted, each ferry will undergo the change with the last being completed by 2016.

Last August, the Steamship Authority received a $1.27 million state grant, awarded with funds from the Federal Highway Administration, to cover some of the $3 million anticipated costs associated with the conversion.

In the weeks ahead, while the EPA will host a public comment period while it reviews the application. Notification will be sent to all interested parties. Ms. Rodney said the EPA will also conduct site visits of harbor pumpout facilities.

The EPA designation does not impact the federal waters of Nantucket Sound, often referred to as the doughnut, which is the future site of Cape Wind turbines. Ms. Rodney said the Clean Water Act, which oversees the regulating of discharges of pollutants in waters, does not allow for federal waters to be designated as no-discharge zone, only state waters. She said there are discussions underway within the EPA office about the concern.