Groups pressure Senate on Great Lakes bill
Legislation would remove EPA control of ballast water
Conservation groups are ramping up their pressure on U.S. senators to pull a piece of pending legislation they fret will be disastrous for the Great Lakes and other U.S. waters.
The Senate is set to vote as early as Wednesday to pull Clean Water Act protections from U.S. waters when it comes to regulation of the “biological pollution” contained in the ballast water discharges of ships from overseas.
“The Clean Water Act has proven to be the most effective tool we have to prevent pollution
into our rivers, lakes and oceans,” Collin O’Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation, said in a news release Tuesday. “Exempting the shipping industry from their obligations under the Clean Water Act not only leaves the door open to future invasive species — it foists the staggering costs of invasive species onto people, communities and businesses.
“Every U.S. senator who cares about our drinking water, fishing and outdoor recreational economy needs to oppose this assault on clean water and pass a clean Coast Guard bill that does not have these damaging provisions.”
The measure, which has failed several times in recent years, is attached to the U.S.
Coast Guard Authorization Act. It calls for taking the Environmental Protection Agency out of the ballast water management business. It would turn it over exclusively to the Coast Guard, an agency focused on mariner safety and not the ecological integrity of the five big lakes that span some 94,000 square miles of open water.
The two agencies currently share management of ship-steadying ballast water. States can have their own ballast water regulations as well.
The shipping industry has complained that the situation has created a hodgepodge of rules and regulations that can be crippling for an industry that, by necessity, operates in multiple jurisdictions. Says the American Great Lakes Ports Association: “The regulatory landscape is chaotic and threatens to impede commerce with inconsistent requirements.”
Ballast water, which is used to balance freighters on open seas, is such a problem because it is often contaminated with species from around the globe that can launch new invasions when the water is discharged at a U.S. port in exchange for cargo.
Since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened the Great Lakes to deep-draft overseas ships in 1959, contaminated ballast water has been blamed for dozens of invaders that have decimated native fish populations, helped trigger toxic algae outbreaks and have been implicated in tens of thousands of bird deaths from botulism.
Studies have shown that pipeclogging invasive mussels alone have done billions of dollars in damage, both to the environment and to the budgets of city drinking water systems, as well as to the bottom lines of businesses that depend on a steady supply of water from pipelines stretching into the lakes.
All ships sailing on the Great Lakes have the potential to move unwanted species, but ecologists say the biggest trouble is caused by the overseas ships because they are the class of ships that bring in new species from around the globe.
Nobody disputes that Great Lakes shipping is big business, but most of the cargo moves from one Great Lakes port to another. The portion of cargo carried by overseas ships carrying up the seaway in recent years has been 5% of the overall tonnage moved on the lakes.
One study done in 2007 estimated that economic savings tied to allowing those ships into the Great Lakes is about $55 million annually.
The average annual cargo loads carried by those seaway vessels has since plummeted to the point that today it could be carried by a single inbound and outbound train from the East Coast.
Environmentalists contend the EPA is the agency that needs to be in charge of ballast water management because it has the authority to invoke the Clean Water Act, which is specifically designed to rein in polluting industries.
If the management is turned over to the Coast Guard, conservation groups say, Clean Water Act protections disappear and they contend it will be much more difficult for regulators — and citizens — to hold the shipping industry accountable to adequately protect the Great Lakes from the next zebra mussel, or quagga mussel, or spiny waterflea or fish-killing viruses like VHS.
“This bill will cost taxpayers and the environment dearly as it is nothing more than a welcome mat to invasive species from international ports that will continue to destroy commercial and recreational fishing industries, clog the nation’s infrastructure, and ruin habitat in our nation’s waters,” said Nina Bell, a Portland, Oregon-based attorney and the executive director of the Northwest Environmental Advocates. That group in 2006 successfully sued in federal court to compel the EPA to regulate ballast water under the Clean Water just like any other pollutant that comes out of a pipe or a smokestack.
The law change the Senate is considering this week would apply to all U.S. waters but is considered particularly sensitive to the Great Lakes, because overseas ships serve as a bridge between freshwater or semi-salty waters around the globe and the Great Lakes, which lie in the middle of the continent. And once an invasion takes hold in the Great Lakes, history shows, it has a tendency to spread inland.
Both the Coast Guard and EPA have a timeline to phase in ballast water treatment systems aboard overseas ships sailing into U.S. waters, though conservationists argue that does not mean one agency can do the job just as well as the other.
Shipping industry advocates argue that the Coast Guard has a history of managing ballast water and also has mechanisms to ratchet up ballast water protections in coming years if new technologies develop.
Conservation groups say the EPA is the agency to handle ships’ biological pollution because, under the Clean Water Act, it doesn’t have to wait for treatment technologies to steadily evolve. It can force them with its authority to require ever-stricter treatment standards.
Nobody expects existing treatment technologies to slam shut the door to all potential future invasions because there is such a dizzying number of organisms with varying life stages that makes complete sterilization essentially impossible.
Both the Coast Guard and EPA presently have similar ballast discharge standards, in terms of the number and size of living organisms allowed to be discharged per cubic meter of water. But conservation groups have successfully sued the EPA to develop more stringent standards, which a federal appeals court found were adopted “arbitrarily and capriciously.” That court order would essentially be nullified if the Senate votes to turn ballast water management over to the Coast Guard.
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin said she is trying to get her colleagues to vote against the measure.
“The current legislation includes a dangerous ballast water provision that will allow for the spread of invasive species in our Great Lakes, hurting local communities and our maritime economy,” Baldwin said in a statement emailed to the Journal Sentinel. “I am working to remove the ballast water provision so we can pass a bill that supports our Coast Guard, protects our Great Lakes and helps our maritime economy.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) had a different take.
“Sen. Johnson sees this as an interstate commerce issue where a federal standard is more appropriate than the current regulatory patchwork based on state land borders given the unified nature of the Great Lakes,” said spokesman Ben Voelkel.