Particles spewing from ships taint region air quality
Twenty-two times a day, roughly 8,000 times a year, a vessel glides through Galveston Bay, bends into the Ship Channel, and docks at one of 150 industrial terminals along the 52-mile waterway, engines running.
Three stories high, these engines burn a fuel 660 times dirtier than diesel. A single ship can emit more pollution than a refinery, hour for hour.
Until recently they actually burned fuel that was even dirtier. New emission rules for ships near shore came into force 18 months ago. Next January ship owners will face even stricter requirements, and the following year, stricter still.
The new rules are projected to bring significant health benefits to coastal residents around the country. For Houston these changes come at a critical time. Vessel traffic is increasing, and the ports are in a period of rapid expansion.
Shipping is an efficient way to move the world’s cargo, but it’s long been known to come at a cost.
The traditional fuel is a leftover from the refining process, called bunker. The sulfurous, molasses-thick ship fuel, cheap and plentiful, propels immense tankers that bring in crude oil from Mexico and Venezuela, and carry out refined fuel and chemicals.
Health hazard
Some 60,000 American deaths each year were attributed to the brown or black smoke that pours from marine smokestacks, according to a study from the University of Delaware, which has been researching transport pollution for years.
“I think if the public knew how many tons a year are ending up in their backyard from the shipping industry, they would be shocked,” said Franky Wrenn, manager at Technical Automation Services Company, Ltd., a Seabrook firm that specializes in instrumental and petrochemical emissions monitoring.
The problem, said Nick Valasek, automation and technology director at the same firm, is that the public and even regulators see ship engines as mere motors.
“It is not just a motor. It could be the same power generation system that Exxon uses. But that boat does not have to meet any of the requirements.”
Ships emit roughly 18,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 13,000 tons of nitrogen oxides and 1,200 tons of small particles per year in the port region that includes Houston, Galveston, Freeport and Texas City. Those figures come from a 2010 report prepared by the firm Environ for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The tiny dots of marine soot land as grit on cars and patio furniture or are inhaled into people’s airways. Some can pass into cells.
The nitrogen oxides wreak a different havoc. On warm, smog-forming days, a bay breeze can blow this pollution payload north around the city and into the suburbs, to The Woodlands and Conroe, or west to Pearland and Sugar Land.
New regulations
There, in places residents choose for their leafy greenness, clouds of caustic ozone materialize and spike. They’re harmful for everyone from runners in training, to the sick, to kids at football and soccer practice.
“Turns out being downwind from the Ship Channel is a problem,” said Barry Lefer, associate chairman in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston. “Marine emissions are the largest unregulated source of sulfur in the Houston metropolitan region.”
Following international pressure, including substantial concern from other American harbor cities, the International Maritime Organization has begun to regulate sulfur and other ship emissions.
Starting Aug. 1, 2012, ships could no longer burn the dirtiest bunker fuel as they steamed inside an invisible 200-mile border at sea, the North American Emission Control Area. There, all ships must now switch to different fuel tanks with lower sulfur content. Northern Europe has a similar emission control zone.
The U.S. Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency jointly enforce this rule.
Lt. Timothy Tilghman said the Coast Guard has added this duty to its regular port inspection.
“We look for their fuel receipts, at their fuel records, which they are required to have,” Tilghman said. “Then we go and conduct an actual physical exam of the locations of those fuel tanks to ensure that what we are being told seems appropriate.”
The Coast Guard estimates it boarded 1,000 of the approximately 8,000 ships in port in Houston last year.
1 company, 30 violations
In the 18 months since the control area took effect, Tilghman said there have been 64 instances in the Houston sector when a ship was coming in on dirtier fuel than allowed. So far, however, not a single ship owner has been cited for violating the law. The Environmental Protection Agency said it is investigating some cases.
Nationwide it has received 157 “deficiencies,” reports from the Coast Guard that ship owners are burning dirty fuel, often stating they couldn’t find the right fuel available for purchase.
“If they are coming from a place where everyone else was able to get compliant fuel, that will raise eyebrows,” said Matt Haber, a senior advisor in the agency’s air enforcement division.
One company has violated the rule 30 times, Haber said, but would not name it, citing an active investigation.
Eleven months from now, fuel requirements for ships inside the 200-mile emission control area will get 10 times stricter. The new fuel can contain no more than 0.1 percent sulfur. It will look more like diesel and less like molasses, but will still be dozens of times dirtier than standard truck diesel.
The EPA estimates health benefits to Americans of the new rules will be enormous. By 2020, the agency said they will prevent 14,000 early deaths each year and relieve respiratory symptoms for more than 4 million people who live near coastlines annually.
Small particle levels in the Houston area could decline by 8 percent, which may sound small, but, “That is huge,” said Elena Craft, a toxicologist with the Environmental Defense Fund. Exposure to fine particles, even for short periods, can cause premature death, heart at- tacks and asthma attacks.
In other parts of the country the health benefit will be even greater, Haber said.
Costly changes
These changes are costly to industry in several ways.
EPA estimates the cost of complying will average $3.2 billion per year after the most significant engine changes come into effect in 2016.
The sulfur-rich older fuel also acts as an engine lubricant, helping to keep giant engines running smoothly.
Joe Keefe, editor for Maritime Professional and Marine News, has written about the fuel tank switching and examined records from California, where the clean marine diesel is already required.
He found some ships have even lost power as they physically made the switch, causing the dangerous situation of a heavy marine vessel adrift near shore.
“That as many as 100 ships in California waters in the past four years alone haven’t gotten it right is ample testimony” that switching fuels “involves risk and requires skill,” he wrote.
Maersk Line, a major shipper, is already using 0.1 percent sulfur diesel, even though it’s not required in most of the United States until 2015, and costs about 50 percent more.
Lee Kindberg, director of environment and sustainability for Maersk, agreed the fuel can be challenging. “The ultralow sulfur fuels are excellent solvents,” Kindberg said. “It can complicate matters when you are switching back and forth.”
But she said Maersk finds the fuel “pretty readily available” and hasn’t experienced issues with loss of power. “We have had none,” she said.
Catching cheaters
Several industry experts expressed concern about a run on marine diesel when demand for it skyrockets next January.
But as long as the rules are applied fairly, they are “a small price to pay for cleaner air,” said Nathan Wesely, president of the West Gulf Maritime Association.
It is possible more ships are skirting the new fuel regulations than official numbers would indicate. That’s because the Coast Guard typically does not board ships until they enter port, 200 miles after they’re required to switch fuel.
“That leaves room for the bad players to play games,” EPA’s Matt Haber said.
To catch ships evading the requirements at sea, EPA has experimented, contracting with a light plane in the Chesapeake Bay. A scientist on board the two-seat pontoon craft pulls samples of exhaust coming off vessels. The smoke can be analyzed for CO2 and sulfur dioxide, revealing what the ship is burning.
“That would tell us if there are cheaters out there,” Haber said.
Automated monitoring
Wrenn of Technical Automation Services wishes ships would use the same continuous monitoring technology energy and chemical plants use.
“These reports can go straight to the port without ever being boarded and they can see, ‘OK these guys are doing it, we’re good,’ ” he said.
Each engine can be monitored, he said, even on the open ocean. Packets of data just transfer whenever the ship gets a connection. Such systems can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.
But with more people moving into the path of pollution in Houston and elsewhere, and with ports expanding, the investments may be inevitable.
“We are blessed to have that opportunity,” said Wrenn’s colleague Nick Valasek. “But we need to be very careful. We don’t want it to become a cesspool.”