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Michele Brown News

12 May 2000

Alaska DEC Addresses Cruise Ship Pollution Measures

Regulators seeking to prevent cruise-ship pollution should measure air quality this summer in Juneau, conduct random tests of waste discharges into Alaska's waters and complete a survey of ships' waste practices, said a draft report issued last Wednesday. The report, released by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), gave conclusions of work groups representing state and federal regulators, cruise companies and citizens concerned about the impacts of growing cruise crowds. The work groups have been meeting since December to address complaints about cruise pollution - and regulatory gaps in Juneau and other ports along southeast Alaska's Inside Passage.

19 Jul 2002

Pacific Oil Spill Task Force to Meet in Tacoma

The Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force will hold its 2002 annual meeting in Tacoma on July 23. The meeting will last from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Sheraton Tacoma Hotel, 1320 Broadway Plaza, and is open to the news media and the public. The task force was formed in 1989 to coordinate oil-spill prevention and response policies that cover some 55,826 miles of coastline, from the Beaufort Sea to the Baja Peninsula, plus the Hawaiian islands. The theme for this year's meeting, Doing It Right: Balancing Regulatory and Non-Regulatory Approaches, will focus on the roles that government regulators and private industry play in reducing the number and severity of oil spills.

25 Feb 2000

Cruise Relations Get Chilly In Alaska

After a decade that saw the size of Alaska cruise ship crowds triple and pollution from the massive vessels foul area waterways, state officials are moving to blunt the negative impact of the booming industry. Cruise ships that ply the Inside Passage and other Alaska waters are not subject to state oversight, even though they carry hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel and more people than the populations of some of the port cities they visit. Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles has introduced a bill to change that. It would require those ships, along with large cargo ships, fishing vessels and the state-owned Alaska Railroad, to meet the same kind of spill prevention and response standards as state law requires of oil tankers.