The state Department of Environmental Conservation's new cruise ship discharge permit has cruise lines crying foul and once again, making dire predictions for their industry's future. If anything, the permit errs toward leniency -- monitoring schedules are lax, and there are no penalties for exceeding ammonia, copper, nickel, zinc and toxicity standards. Regardless, the discharge permit will have no significant impact on their handsome profits.
Their main beef is that they didn't get a mixing zone -- an area around every ship where Alaska's water quality standards won't apply. Most dischargers are unfortunately graced with mixing zones, but allowing cruise lines to sink to the lowest common denominator of performance is inappropriate. Cruise ships move, and their pollution-dilution zones would move with them. Fish near the ship when they discharge could be contaminated, and fishermen won't even know. Furthermore, cruise ship mixing zones would overlap, so monitoring a ship with respect to a discrete area to determine if and when there is an impact would be impossible. That's why cruise ships need to clear the higher bar.
Thanks to a federal regulation (read: loophole), mixing zones "legalize" pollution, in direct conflict with the Clean Water Act's most fundamental goal: zero-discharge of pollutants into public waters. Supporters claim there's enough capacity in the ocean to absorb all of our waste. Isn't that the same argument we heard about our atmosphere's ability to absorb carbon dioxide?
No one will pay to build a better treatment system if they can pollute for free. Perhaps the biggest problem with mixing zones is they remove any incentive for improving treatment. Technologies that bring the cruise ships into compliance would also be available to other industrial and municipal dischargers, making waters cleaner all over the state.
Today, the cruise lines predict that meeting water quality standards without a mixing zone will be impossible. In 2001, they said there were no vessel technologies that could remove sewage bacteria. Thanks to public pressure, not corporate citizenship, most cruise ships coming to Alaska now operate with those improved systems.
In 2006, they predicted the head-tax would cripple their industry. Thank God for common sense: The initiative passed despite their ridiculous doom-and-gloom propaganda. Sailings, passenger numbers and spending/passenger figures all increased in 2007, and communities are now receiving head-tax revenues to offset the industry's impacts on local infrastructure.
The cruise lines have done nothing for two years to meet the end-of-pipe rules yet predict they won't comply even with two additional years afforded by the new permit. Given their current effort, it looks like one of their predictions may finally come true! My crystal ball says they have no intention of meeting the law; they'll try to scuttle the rule when the two-year grace period for initiatives ends by squeezing the Legislature into an end run around the voters.
A mixing zone loophole may be big enough for a cruise ship to sail through -- but our waters and our fish deserve better.
Gershon Cohen was a co-sponsor of the Alaska Cruise Ship Initiative approved by voters in 2006. He lives in Haines.
GERSHON COHEN