Cruise Ship Sewage
Cruise ships are called floating cities for a reason. In 2005, 29 visits
by cruise ships brought approximately 64,000 passengers and crew to Portland,
Maine, a city of 64,000.
When the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 only about a dozen cruise
ships plied U.S. waters. Not enough, regulators concluded, to have much
of an impact. The ships were only required to minimal treatment and could
discharge their wastes anywhere. Today, worldwide, about 220 cruise ships
carry more than 10 million passengers a year, a number that is expected
to double before 2010.
While cruise ship visitors are welcome in Portland, their wastes are
not. Friends of Casco Bay and Casco Baykeeper Joe Payne introduced the
issue of cruise ship pollution in Maine with a Citizen Forum on ‘Pollution
Solutions for Cruise Ship Discharges’ for legislators, candidates
and concerned citizens. As a result, state legislators passed a law in
2004 restricting the disposal of gray water (from sinks and showers)
into the bay. Since then, Casco Baykeeper has been advocating for Casco
Bay to become the first waterbody in Maine designated a ‘No Discharge
Area.’ This protection would stop ships from discharging their
partially treated sewage into the bay. A No Discharge Area designation
by U.S. EPA is the only way a state can legally regulate sewage pollution
from vessels.
Yet, as the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was drafting
its No Discharge Area application to EPA, Payne learned of confidential
negotiations between the state and cruise ship lobbyists to ask EPA to
grant an unprecedented exemption for ships with advanced wastewater treatment
systems. This was in direct conflict with earlier stakeholder meetings
and legislative hearings where the issue had been debated and rejected.
Had the cruise ship industry won the exemption for Casco Bay waters,
it would have weakened the Clean Water Act around the country.
On August 12 Payne, Friends of Casco Bay Executive Director Cathy Ramsdell
and State Representatives Jeff Kaelin and Herb Adams met with Maine Governor
John Baldacci and state environmental agency staff to persuade the administration
to drop the exemption. They explained that while advanced wastewater
treatment systems remove bacteria and suspended solids, they do little
to address nutrients in wastewater. Nutrient pollution is already a problem
in Portland Harbor, where nutrient levels have been documented at 8 to
20 times above healthy limits. Governor Baldacci heard the message and
acted. Not only did he reverse the state position on the exemption, he
held a press conference to announce broader protections for Casco Bay,
declaring “Casco Bay is an environmental treasure that deserves
our best effort to preserve and protect it.”
Word from EPA Region I in Boston is that the designation of Casco Bay
as a No Discharge Area will be in place before the Maine boating season
begins around mid-June, when the water temperature warms up to an invigorating
55°F. Maine will become the first state in the nation to ban the
discharge of sewage, gray water and treated oily bilge water from cruise
ships. Hopefully, others will follow suit.
The cruise ship Galaxy with its 1820 passengers enters Casco Bay, Maine.
Nutrients
The
Chesapeake Bay is very sick – literally gasping for oxygen.
In recent summers, nutrient pollution has turned 40 percent of bay waters
anoxic and lifeless. In the Gulf of Mexico a dead zone the size of New
Jersey forms each summer from nutrient pollution.
Nitrogen and phosphorous are vital nutrients for plants and animals. But
too much can overwhelm the natural system causing massive algal growth
that smothers aquatic life and, when it dies, depletes dissolved oxygen
in the water. Without oxygen fish and shellfish must flee or die. After
agricultural runoff, inadequately treated sewage is the largest source
of nutrient pollution.
Sewage treatment plants clean up wastewater and dump treated water back
into our waterways. Common treatment technologies remove solids and kill
pathogens, but most of the nutrients remain. But affordable technologies
can remove much of these nutrients. EPA estimates that the cost of installing
these technologies range from $1.82 to $10.95 per ratepayer per year – far
below the ‘sky is falling’ estimates of sewage plant operators.
We must reduce all sources of nutrient pollution, but taking sewage treatment
seriously is an obvious first step. Eliminating these dead zones will require
strong leadership and political will, but the solution is no secret:
Enforce federal requirements on the amount of nutrients that can be discharged
by sewage plants;
Enforce federal requirements that prohibit new sources of nutrient pollution
into polluted waters; and
Fund the installation and operation of state-of-the-art nutrient reduction
technology at sewage plants.