Coast Guard Leaving State Ballast Water Programs in its Wake
By John Berge, Vice President, Pacific Merchant Shipping Association
The month of December brought welcome news from the Coast Guard; the type approval of three ballast water treatment systems, providing a definitive pathway to compliance with the Coast Guard rule adopted in 2012. These approvals have been a long time coming, and help to alleviate industry’s concerns over the ratification in September of 2016 of the IMO Ballast Water convention, and the prospect of having to install IMO compliant treatment without knowing whether those same systems will satisfy U.S. requirements.
This harkens in the next generation of ballast water management, with technology capable of achieving a 10,000 times or more reduction in organisms; a giant step beyond the stop-gap method of open-ocean exchange that has been our interim strategy for the last two decades.
Some coastal states have pursued their own parallel programs to control aquatic invasive species introduction from ships. The states of California, Oregon and Washington are prime examples, with California having the most extensive (and expensive) program. With the pending installation of these treatment systems on the world’s fleet, one must ask what relevance these state programs continue to have and what do they bring to the table in terms of added environmental protection.
The Coast Guard program got off to a slow start in the late 90’s with a voluntary program showing low compliance levels. This lack of a robust response to the impacts of invasive species provided the states with an opening to pursue their own solutions. And so for more than 15 years we have had parallel efforts at the state level duplicating the federal program, with the added bonus of user fees for the privilege. These include duplicate inspection and reporting, adding burdens to already overworked crews, as well as duplication of database management for the same information.
The world’s fleet will have the best available ballast treatment technology installed over the next six years. There are also requirements for testing and confirmation of operational efficacy of the technology under both the Coast Guard rule and the EPA Vessel General Permit. It is difficult to envision a meaningful risk reduction role for states in this paradigm.
California received approval in December to increase their Marine Invasive Species Control Fund ship arrival fee in 2017 by 18%, from $850 to $1,000. Oregon also has such a ship fee, and Washington State is considering the adoption of a similar fee this year, although those fees are considerably lower than California’s. We understand the state’s desire to ensure the environmental protection of their waters, and there is room for states to augment the existing federal program, however the rote duplication of requirements for record keeping, reporting, enforcement and database management is a huge waste of resources for both industry and the states and provides for no additional environmental protection.
As we move into this next generation of ballast water management through proven treatment technology it is time for industry, the states and the federal agencies to collaborate on how we can harmonize our efforts and reduce, if not eliminate the useless duplication of effort and cost that is occurring today.