Leaving Less In The Wake - Alaska passes laws to regulate cruise ship pollution - Brief Article

Cruise Travel, June, 2001 by Phyllis White, Robert White

"Alaska's pristine waters are a big part of the reason visitors love to come to Alaska ... we just have to make sure they don't love us to death," Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska said recently.

The cruise industry has grown in Alaska more than 600 percent since 1982. The polluting of Alaska's waters has increased right along with it, step by step.

After years of noise made by environmentalists, now joined by Alaskan politicians, both Republican and Democratic, new regulations to control cruise-ship pollution were amended into one of the last appropriations bills to pass in the final weeks of the most recent Congress. But laws mean little unless they're enforced. And the federal government's attention to this problem has been lax in the past.

All of us who enjoy cruising Alaska's waters, marveling at the grandeur of the glaciers, the soaring green-clad mountains, gigantic whales leaping into the air, playful otters--we all have a stake in what will happen, which depends on whether or not the new amendments to the Omnibus Appropriations Bill, HR 4577, are vigorously enforced.

How bad has it been up till now? Well, nearly 40 ships ply Alaskan waters each summer, most of them carrying from 700 to 2,000 passengers. That's around, say, 60,000 passengers and crew at sea all the time. That many people create a lot of waste.

Waste like "graywater," for example, which is waste water from showers, sinks, and kitchens; and "blackwater," which is treated sewage. Just one of these large ships could discharge 350,000 gallons a day of that stuff--even, in some cases, in the Inside Passage, and seldom more than six miles from shore--yet still, technically, not violate existing laws regulating such dumping.

Alaska's Governor Tony Knowles raised an alarm last fall when he noted that in September 36 random samples of sewage required by federal law to be treated were analyzed after they were discharged by cruise ships. Not one complied with federal standards. More than 70 percent of the samples of supposedly more benign graywater had levels of fecal coliform bacteria, an indication of human waste, that far exceeded the standards imposed on actual sewage--up to 50,000 times the federal standard for treated sewage.

The new federal legislation covers cruise ships carrying 500 or more passengers and prohibits vessels from dumping untreated sewage in any Alaskan waters. In addition, the bill will regulate graywater discharges for the first time. From now on, cruise ships may discharge graywater only when they are a mile or more offshore and underway at a speed of six knots or more, which will serve to diffuse the effects of the now-treated discharge.

Short-term results of the legislation, if all goes well, will be to lessen the impact of untreated or poorly treated wastes on Alaska's environment. The long-term results could be even more important. The bill's sponsors hope that the cruise lines will, as a result, start paying real attention to this problem. If the bill spurs the development of new technology that does a better job of treating both blackwater and graywater before it is dumped into the seas, then it will have achieved a great deal, indeed.

But it could lead to even greater lasting benefit. "Alaska is not unique in contending with the impact of the cruise industry," Governor Knowles said. We who sail as passengers, and the cruise lines that carry us, impact many more areas of the world than Alaska. Think of the vast numbers of cruise ships sailing among the islands of the Caribbean year-round. Add the Mediterranean plus ships in every part of the globe, even the Antarctic.

We've mostly dealt with the problem of seagoing trash by now. Seldom are cruise ships found anymore dumping solid waste overboard at sea; large fines and bad publicity took care of that. Perhaps new ways of dealing with liquid waste will improve the environment all of us encounter wherever in the world we sail. All because of this bill.

If it's enforced.