This non-union operation does all the bunkering in Puget Sound.

Department of Ecology News Release – November 18, 2009

09-269

BELLEVUE – The Department of Ecology (Ecology) has fined Olympic Tug & Barge Co. (Olympic) $47,000 for two oil spills, one last year in the West Waterway off Harbor Island in Seattle and one this year off Bainbridge Island.

“Olympic took these incidents very seriously,” said Dale Jensen, who manages Ecology’s spill prevention, preparedness and response program. “The company’s success at ensuring that boat crews strictly follow its policies for internal fuel transfers will lead to effective protection for Washington’s waters.”

“In our investigations into both cases, we found that the responsible crew members failed to comply with established company procedures for internal transfers, which resulted in the termination of both individuals,” said Sven Christensen, General Manager for Olympic Tug & Barge. “Our investigations also found that human factors were the root cause in both incidents. We have since made systemic changes to improve training of vessel crews and to ensure compliance with company policies and procedures.”

The second incident – which prompted a $23,000 fine – occurred on the night of Feb. 2, 2009, when the tug Catherine Quigg was under way southbound off Bainbridge Island. Crew members noticed fuel spilling off the deck into the water. An internal fuel transfer between tanks was immediately halted.

The spill – later calculated at 211 gallons by Ecology – left a sheen in the main shipping channel. Olympic hired a response contractor which responded with four boats to recover oil from the water. Ecology inspected Bainbridge Island beaches by foot and by boat at first light and observed no shore impacts from the spill.

Investigators determined that a tank overfilled during the transfer, possibly because the piping system and valves had not been inspected beforehand as required in the company’s policies and procedures. The chief engineer – who was new to the Catherine Quigg – had not completed an orientation for that particular vessel. The tug captain had assigned too few crew members to monitor the transfer. Close monitoring enables a crew to spot and stop potential overflows. The crew also failed to plug the scuppers – drain holes on the deck.

Olympic may request Ecology reconsideration of the penalties or file appeals to the Washington State Pollution Control Board within 30 days.

Ecology’s spill prevention and response programs are part of the department’s efforts to reduce toxic threats and to restore Puget Sound.

###

Media Contacts:
Larry Altose, Ecology media relations, 206-920-2600
David Byers, Ecology spill response section manager, 360-407-6974
Dione Lee, Director of Quality, Safety and Environmental Protection, 206-447-3057.

For more information: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/spills/spills.html

Local News
Sep 22, 2009

A Seattle resident related to one of the hikers said today he is optimistic Iran will release the trio this week.
http://www.king5.com/news/local/62930287.html

Kitsap Sun 11.13.09
By Christopher Dunagan
Posted November 12, 2009 at 7:28 p.m. , updated November 12, 2009 at 7:28 p.m.

A newborn killer whale calf, designated J-46, was photographed Wednesday afternoon while swimming with its mother, J-28, south of Whidbey Island and west of Hansville. The orange color is partly the result of a sunset taking place and partly the natural orange coloration of a newborn orca. (Photo courtesy of Fred Felleman)
A new killer whale calf has been born in J Pod, one of the three pods that frequent the Salish Sea, which includes Puget Sound.

The new baby has been given the designation J-46, the next available number in sequence, said Susan Berta of Orca Network. The calf has been seen swimming close to J-28, a 16-year-old orca named Polaris who is presumed to be the mom.
© Fred Felleman
This birth brings the population of J Pod to 27 and the total for all three pods to 87. The Southern Resident population was declared an “endangered” species in 2005, after the population had dropped to a recent low of 79 animals in 2001.

J Pod has been out of the area for days but appeared with K Pod off San Juan Island on Wednesday afternoon and later in Canadian waters near Victoria, Berta said. Late Thursday morning, the two pods were spotted off Whidbey Island. And by Thursday afternoon, they had moved to Possession Sound, south of Whidbey and west of Hansville, where biologist Fred Felleman observed them for three hours from his boat.

“It was a spectacular encounter,” Felleman said. “They were spread out on both sides of the (Possession) Bank, running north and south.”

He described one young male orca hunting salmon by swimming in a circular manner; he noted several others literally “surfing” on the wake of a container ship; and he spotted the new baby just as the sun was dropping below the horizon.

“I got a cute shot of the calf riding behind mom’s dorsal fin,” Felleman said, noting that the calf’s grandmother, J-17 or Princess Angeline, stayed between the calf and the boat the whole time. “It was a magical day.”

For a discussion about water-related issues, check out the blog Watching Our Water Ways at kitsapsun.com.

Also see:  http://pugetsoundblogs.com/waterways/2009/11/14/photos-a-new-baby-picture-along-with-surfing-orcas/

Election night reflections.
Fred Felleman

I saw David Brewster running between campaign parties last night reminding me how I missed the Weekly’s political endorsements, especially being without the P-I.

I was also reflecting on the type of people drawn to politics given the inevitability of increasing negativity associated with close races and the kind of press politicians get.

I was particularly struck by the Times October 31st coverage of Congressman Dicks’interview with the Office of Congressional Ethics on page A3 for purported improprieties while 1/2 the space was afforded on page B6 for his appropriation of $50 million to implement the Puget Sound Action Agenda (for which he received no credit) in addition to the $152 million in stimulus funds, including $52 million to accelerate the restoration of the Elwha river from 2013 to 2011. This dam removal project he has championed for well over a decade will do more to recover our endangered orca than any singular activity to date.

Being a bit of a maritime junkie I am particularly amused by the folks who run for the Port of Seattle where no good deed should go unpunished and the Commissioners get paid a whopping $8k/yr. I hope Max Vekich stays interested in Port Reform for he has much to offer.

Given the inherent influence of money in politics, rather than be shocked by such realities, I think it behooves voters to not just look at “qualifications”, rather a candidate’s basic values are more likely to serve as the best indicator as to how they will balance the competing interests they will be confronted with.

In the end we need to judge those who we have chosen to serve in public office by how they have chosen to leverage their influence.

Thankfully we get both qulifications and heart in Dow.

In addition we have a Congress and administration who are trying to invest stimulus funds into efforts that will help sustain us. Let’s be sure to thank them.

Thanks Norm, I hope our soon to be elected officials in the region get to accomplish a fraction of what you have so far. Dow has a running start to lead us forward through some tough tomes the offer real opportunities to redefine our priorities.

Welcome aboard holland and Albro to the Port – there’s plenty of progress still to make.

— Fred Felleman

One Response to “Major oil spill in Australia finally brought to an end”

1. Fred Felleman Says:
   November 4th, 2009 at 1:02 pm Finally they get their act together! So much for the mantra often repeated about modern environmentally sensitive development practices…. Another example why we fought so hard in the 1980’s to ban oil rigs off our coast. It will be interesting to see how thorough a job is done of evaluating the effectiveness and impacts of the heavy dispersant use.

   Closer to home the recent oil spill in San Francisco Bay during a common bunkering operation spread farther than need be due to the fact that CA does not require pre-booming of transfer operations as Ecology now requires after legislation introduced subsequent to the Point Well’s spill.

   Jay Inslee has attachment a provision to the Coast Guard reauthorization HR 3619 that would address such issues but it is not included the Senate version.

   Unfortunately the public is only made aware of such overdue issues when there’s oil in the water leading regulators to act.

Friday, October 30, 2009 – Page updated at 03:01 AM

By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter
HOBUCK BEACH, Neah Bay, Clallam County — They died in droves: common murres, scoters, loons and more, in the largest-ever-recorded kill of seabirds on Washington’s coast.

Bedraggled dead seabirds tangled in sea wrack on this remote, wild beach are just some of more than 8,000 birds killed since just after Labor Day, scientists estimate. The death toll — which might eventually pass 10,000 — is from a mysterious algae bloom still off the coast that has scientists and researchers worried and mystified.

“I think it’s scary. We have no record of anything like this in the past 30 years, and no one knows why it is happening,” said Julia Parrish, associate director of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington. “We are not used to big natural disasters, but this is one of them.”

Up and down Washington’s coast, scientists are reporting the longest lasting and largest harmful algae bloom ever recorded here, and the largest recorded mass mortality of seabirds ever in Washington waters. “It’s bigger than an oil spill,” Parrish said.

Ken and Mary Campbell of Port Angeles first realized something was terribly wrong when they walked Sooes Beach at the Makah Indian reservation in Neah Bay last week. They were kicking through calf-deep brownish foam on the beach. And they saw birds they don’t usually see on the beach: seabirds.

“There were about 30 of them, and they were not land birds; we knew something was up,” Mary Campbell said. They quickly realized the birds were in distress; some looked dead already, and were moving only their eyes. “The worst of all were the loons; they were crying,” Campbell said.

Long Beach was also hard hit last week. Die-offs just as bad and worse happened the month before, at First, Second and Third Beach.

Scientists are assessing whether the number of seabirds lost is high enough to affect populations of seabirds already in trouble, such as scoters.

“So many of our species of seabirds were already in decline, and we don’t even know why, so a mortality event like this with such a large number of birds is certainly a concern,” said Mary Sue Brancato of the Olympic National Marine Sanctuary in Port Angeles. She was at Hobuck Beach on Wednesday, tallying carcasses of seabirds.

The species of algae causing the trouble, Akashiwo sanguinea, is not unusual to find in Washington waters. But it is very unusual to find in such high concentrations, of as much as 1.5 million cells per liter of seawater.

Waves break the cells of the algae, releasing compounds that create a foam that is both sticky and soapy. Any bird that swims or dives into it is at risk, because compounds in the foam strip natural waterproofing oils from the birds’ feathers. The birds quickly become hypothermic and stressed, struggling onto beaches to escape the cold water.

The bloom is not harmful to people or pets. And scavengers eating the carcasses of the dead birds aren’t in peril.

Volunteers have been taking the birds to rehab centers, including the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) shelter in Lynnwood. It may take the sea birds as long as six weeks to recover by preening their feathers, said Virginia Huang, president of the board of directors for the Wildlife Center of the North Coast, in Astoria.

That rehab center was so packed with birds last week and through the weekend that the Coast Guard on Monday airlifted more than 300 seabirds to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Fairfield, Calif.

“We were completely overwhelmed,” Huang said. “We put out a call for help. Every single cage in the hospital was filled and we had temporary pens on the floors, kennels stacked two and three high; rooms we didn’t even usually keep birds in were full of birds; we were turning people away; we just didn’t have the capability to care for them.”

The crisis has ebbed, with little foam and few struggling birds found on the beaches this week — so far. But this is a situation that scientists have already seen ramp up and down since September, with the bloom moving, separating, meandering in patches, but not yet dispersing.

There is plenty of harmful algae still out there, said Anthony Odell, who leads a harmful algae bloom sampling program for the University of Washington Olympic Natural Resources Center in Forks, Clallam County. Another storm is predicted to hit the coast this weekend, and it could whip up another batch of killer foam besieging a whole new wrack of birds.

“We don’t know why it (the algae) is so persistent,” said Vera Trainer, a research oceanographer with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, who specializes in harmful algae bloom. She said no one yet knows any one cause of the bloom.

“We need to look at these organisms as indicators of some kind of change, whether climate change or other factors,” Trainer said. “The ocean is trying to tell us something.”

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com

Copyright © The Seattle Times Company

Wall Street Journal
October 30, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703399204574505034081842414.html

By GUY CHAZAN

U.S. workplace-safety regulators Friday slapped British oil giant BP PLC with a record $87 million fine for failing to correct safety problems at its Texas City refinery, the scene of an explosion in 2005 that killed 15 people.

The fine issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — the largest in the agency’s history — shows how hard it has been for BP to draw a line under Texas City, a disaster that badly tarnished its reputation in the U.S. A person close to the company said it was considering appealing the decision.

A birds eye view of the wreckage at the BP facility in Texas City on March 24, 2005.
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-EU035_bptexa_D_20091030091529.jpg

The hefty penalty comes two years after BP agreed to pay a $50 million criminal fine over the explosion — the biggest ever levied under the Clean Air Act. BP already paid OSHA $21.4 million in fines for safety violations at Texas City in Sept. 2005, and has also settled thousands of civil claims related to the blast.

BP said it was “disappointed” with OSHA’s citations. “We believe our efforts to improve process safety performance have been among the most strenuous and comprehensive that the refining industry has ever seen,” it said in a statement.

At issue is a dispute over the settlement agreement BP entered into with OSHA in September 2005, under which the oil company pledged to remove potential hazards similar to those that caused the refinery blast.

BP believes it is compliance with the agreement, despite OSHA’s criticisms, and has referred the matter to the Occupational Health & Safety Review Commission, a body that is independent of OSHA.

BP said it was dismayed that OSHA had gone ahead before the Review Commission had given the dispute its full consideration. “We continue to believe we are in full compliance with the Settlement Agreement, and we look forward to demonstrating that before the Review Commission,” BP said.

OSHA said it was issuing BP with 271 notifications for non-compliance, with fines totaling $56.9 million. It also identified 439 “willful violations” of process safety management, with penalties totaling $30.7 million.

In a statement, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said instead of taking action to protect employees, BP had allowed “hundreds of potential hazards to continue unabated.”

“Workplace safety is more than a slogan. It’s the law,” she said. “The U.S. Department of Labor will not tolerate the preventable exposure of workers to hazardous conditions.”

After the 2005 blast, which killed 15 people and injured 170, regulators and BP internal investigators uncovered a series of big safety and operational shortcomings at the plant and across BP’s American refining unit, saying BP’s aggressive cost-cutting had played a big role in the tragedy — one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the U.S. in the last 20 years.

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board concluded in 2006 that decisions by senior BP management to defer overhauls, cut staff and rein in costs at Texas City had helped cause the explosion. Since the disaster, BP says it has invested billions of dollars in its refining business to improve safety.

The blast occurred in a part of the refinery known as an isomerization unit, that processes gasoline to boost octane. The unit’s processing tower where gasoline components are separated was overfilled, and an explosive mix of hydrocarbon liquid and vapor was formed which escaped into the atmosphere and was ignited. Alarms and gauges that were supposed to warn that the equipment was overfilled did not work properly.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

By Jean Shin
CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal have been jailed nearly three months
American trio charged with illegally crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan from Iran
Video was shot by Shon Meckfessel, a friend who went to Kurdistan with them
RELATED TOPICS
Fars News Agency
Kurdistan
Iraq
NEW YORK (CNN) — On Tuesday, the counter at the Web site Free the Hikers was at 88 days.

The site has been counting the days, hours and minutes since July 31, when three U.S. hikers — Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal — were detained under charges of illegally crossing the border from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iran.

The three remain imprisoned under Iranian custody for what their family and friends claim was an innocent mistake.

In the latest effort to obtain their release, the hikers’ families have released video of the three — shot two days before they were detained — fooling around like friends on vacation.

The video was filmed by Shon Meckfessel, a friend who accompanied them on their Kurdistan trip. Meckfessel had meant to join them on their fateful outing but stayed behind because he felt under the weather.

The videos show glimpses of the relaxed travelers clearly enjoying themselves as they take a break from exploring a town in Kurdistan.

“Yo it’s hot. Yo, it’s hot. It’s ’cause I’m in Iraq. Someone get me a fan. Someone get me a fan. ‘Cause I’m in Kurdistan,” Fattal raps as he chuckles and points to the Iraqi landscape behind him.

The second video shows the three walk into what looks like an abandoned brick building and randomly start dancing, with Meckfessel directing them from behind the camera.

The videos have been posted on YouTube and can be seen on the Web site, at www.freethehikers.org.

“It’s bittersweet,” said Cindy Hickey, Bauer’s mother. “Watching them, I see the lightness of heart that they had making [the videos]. It’s fun to see them, but watching it, I wonder what they are still doing there. These are innocent kids.”

Hickey has said that the families still have not been able to contact Bauer, Shourd or Fattal. Through the release of the videos, Hickey says that they hope “it will indicate how harmless these kids are.”

Switzerland’s ambassador to Iran paid the three a consular visit in September and said they were in good condition, but they have had no direct contact with relatives, the families said in a news release. Switzerland handles U.S. consular matters in Tehran, as the United States and Iran have no diplomatic relations.

The Americans entered northern Iraq from Turkey on July 28 during a planned five-day hike. Bauer and Shourd had been living in Damascus, Syria; Fattal was visiting. They set out to hike in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Meckfessel, who spoke with Bauer the morning of their hike, said his friends did not know they were near the border and made “a simple and regrettable mistake” by crossing into Iran.

Relatives have said the three accidentally strayed into Iran across an unmarked border.

Authorities in Iran charged the three with illegally entering the country, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/27/iran.hikers

Tuesday , October 27, 2009

Gene J. Koprowski

Raw sewage contains disease pathogens and toxins, impairs the respiratory functions in water life, and causes algae blooms. And cruise ships are dumping it just off shore, possibly washing up on the beach near where your family is vacationing.

Nightmare fiction? Hardly.

Though most travelers don’t know about this practice, environmentalists tell Foxnews.com this kind of wastewater dumping is all too common for the cruise industry: Federal lawsuits have been filed against the cruise ship companies. The U.S. Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have cracked down on the firms. For years, legislators have tried to get a new bill passed which would reign in the hazardous practices. Indeed, one proposed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) was introduced just days ago.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the cruise industry has grown at double the rate of the rest of the travel industry. The average cruise ship has the capacity for as many as 7,000 passengers and crew members; the boats are floating cities, with restaurants, hair salons, dry cleaners and entertainment venues.

During a typical week, EPA says, a cruise ship with 3,000 passengers can generate 200,000 gallons of waste and sewage and 1 million gallons of gray water from showers and drains.

As the vessels leave port and turn back out to sea, the ship’s engineers dump tons of raw human waste, as well as all of the gray water accumulated during the week-long cruise. That water pollution kills fish and other marine life, and creates a massive algae bloom, despoiling the pristine waters.

The cruise industry trade group, The Cruise Lines International Association, counters this harsh criticism, last week stating that it has been a “leader in the maritime industry’s effort to reduce its environmental footprint.” Members of the group include the big brand names of the cruise ship field, like Carnival Cruise Lines, Disney Cruise Line, and Celebrity Cruises.

The trade group says ships of its member companies received an average sanitation score just above 97 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The minimum score required for sanitation safety and public health is 85. The industry also says it has done a lot for water conservation aboard its vessels.

Critics don’t think that’s enough, however. They claim the ships go out to sea, 12 miles beyond the U.S. shoreline (and beyond federal jurisdiction), and release the waste, threatening sea life and the public health of coastal communities.

“No one knows exactly what’s thrown overboard. Raw sewage contains a lot of disease pathogens and toxins,” says Dean Navjoks, a environmental policy expert with Yadkin Riverkeeper, Inc., a water advocacy group. “It impairs the respiratory functions in water life. It causes algae blooms. This has become a priority for the environmental community.”

A report released earlier this decade by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) determined that, from 1993 to 1998 alone, cruise ships were involved in 87 confirmed cases of discharges of wastes into U.S. waters, and have paid more than $30 million in fines to the government. The Department of Justice prosecuted Royal Caribbean in 1999, and the company pled guilty to a total of 21 felony counts in six U.S. jurisdictions, agreeing to pay a record $18 million in criminal fines.

Navjoks notes that the cruise industry more recently agreed with Alaskan authorities to reign in its water pollution footprint and install adequate sewage treatment facilities aboard all ships that made port in Alaska. The rules went into place in 2006 and serve as something of a role model for national efforts now, Navjoks adds.

Some experts think that there are other reasons that the cruise ship water pollution issue is now getting this level of high-profile attention. Environmental groups finally have “an administration and Congress that are amenable to this,” says Bruce Pasfield, a partner in Alston & Bird’s environmental and land use litigation practice group, in Washington D.C., and former prosecutor in the DOJ’s environmental crimes unit. “From what I can see, this kind of legislation has been tried, unsuccessfully, in a number of legislative sessions.”

The move could also been seen as part of the current administration’s economic policies, notes Joseph A. Morris, a former associate attorney general in the DOJ and Reagan White House lawyer. “Populism,” says Morris, point out that it’s “easy to beat up on cruise-takers as rich, leisure-time-laden parasites.”

Morris also thinks this may be yet another veiled attack on senior citizens, “who make up such a huge proportion of American cruise takers.”

But others argue the technology to treat human waste at sea has grown cheaper in recent years, since so many cruise lines have already purchased it for their Alaska operations. The cost would be about $7 per passenger, and would, it is conceded, likely be passed along to passengers in the form of higher ticket prices.

“The industry should get credit for its good water conservation stewardship and the other good things they have done for the health of the passengers,” says Neesha Kulkarni, a legislative associate at environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth. “But you also have to look at their total environmental footprint.”

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) today introduced legislation to protect the oceans and marine life by extending the Clean Water Act to appropriately regulate the millions of gallons of wastewater discharged in U.S. waters every day by cruise ships.  Durbin’s bill, known as the Clean Cruise Ship Act would ban the release of raw, untreated sewage in U.S. waters, including the Great Lakes. Nearly identical legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives today by Representative Sam Farr (D-CA).

“The average cruise ship produces over 1.2 million gallons of wastewater every week,” Durbin said. “Today, there are more than 230 cruise ships operating around the world, generating millions of gallons of wastewater daily.  Under the current system, these ships can directly dump their waste into our oceans and the Great Lakes with minimal oversight.  Vacation cruises can be a wonderful way to see the world, but we cannot afford to leave the destruction of the oceans in the wake of these ships.”

Durbin’s Clean Cruise Ship Act would change the way cruise ships manage the removal of this harmful waste.  The number of cruise ship passengers has been growing nearly twice as fast as any other mode of travel.  In the U.S. alone, the numbers are approaching ten million passengers a year with some ships carrying 3,000 or more passengers.  Each week, these ships produce massive amounts of waste: a single ship can produce over 200,000 gallons of human sewage; one million gallons of graywater from kitchens, laundry and showers; more than 10,000 gallons of sewage sludge; more than 130 gallons of hazardous waste and over 25,000 gallons of oily bilge water that collects in ship bottoms.

Currently, waste and other harmful pollutants are minimally regulated near the east and west coasts of the U.S. and can be dumped untreated three miles beyond the coast.  These pollutants contaminate our waters resulting in beach closures, consumption of polluted fish and shellfish, risk to public health for people swimming in our oceans and damage to coral reefs (areas around Florida and Jamaica have lost nearly 90% of their living coral reefs).  While some cruise ships industries are trying to reduce their environmental footprint, their efforts are not uniform.  The federal standards proposed in Durbin’s Clean Cruise Ship Act would apply one set of requirements to all companies.

“The protection of U.S. waters is vital to our nation’s health and economy,” said Durbin.  “The oceans not only support nearly 50% of all species of life on Earth, but food from the oceans also provides 20% of the animal protein and five percent of the total protein in the human diet.  It is time to update the laws that protect our oceans, and urge adoption of the best available wastewater treatment technology at sea.”

Durbin’s Clean Cruise Ship Act would amend the Clean Water Act and protect U.S. waterways by:

Regulating cruise ships under the EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System for sewage, graywater and bilge water;
Prohibiting the discharge of sewage, graywater, and bilge water within twelve miles of shore;
Requiring that, outside of 12 miles, sewage, graywater, and bilge water be treated to reduce pollution to the levels currently achievable by advanced wastewater treatment systems;
Prohibiting the dumping of sewage sludge, incinerator ash and hazardous waste in U.S. waters;
Creating inspection and sampling programs and an onboard observer program.

Durbin said his interest in this legislation was sparked by a report on ocean pollution that was published in 2003 by the Pew Oceans Commission. Since then, reports on the US Commission on Ocean Policy and the Environmental Protection Agency have confirmed the significant threat of cruise ship pollution to human health and aquatic environments. In December 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report which concluded that the “marine sanitation devices” ships are required to use in order to dump human body wastes and other toilet waste within three miles of shore were not working.

In addition to ocean-going vessels, Durbin’s bill would also strengthen discharge requirements for cruise ships operating in the Great Lakes.  The bill would require that cruise ships operating on the Great Lakes abide by the same 12 miles prohibition on dumping waste.  It also would require these ships to update their technology to treat sewage and graywater before it is discharged into the Great Lakes.

Durbin’s legislation is supported by a wide range of environmental groups including:

Friends of the Earth; Earthjustice; Oceana; Surfrider; Campaign to Save America’s Waters; and Northwest Environmental Advocates.