The Ballast Water Management Conundrum
U.S. Ten years on, there’s little certain about ballast water management regulations that the industry can chart a course around other than that it will be expensive – possibly the most costly marine retrofit to date. With install estimates running from $500,000 to as much as $5 million per vessel, across some 68,000 commercial ships estimated by the IMO to transfer 7 billion tons of ballast water annually – industry players say we could be looking at as much as an $80 billion market. Eventually, that is, because there is not a lot of activity right now.
USCG Accepts BWTS as Alternate Management Systems
The U.S. Coast Guard announced the acceptance of nine ballast water treatment systems today as Alternate Management Systems (AMS) in compliance with the service’s March 2012 final rule for Standards for Living Organisms in Ships’ Ballast Water Discharged (SLOSBWD) in U.S. waters. AMS acceptance by the Coast Guard is a temporary designation given to a ballast water treatment system approved by a foreign administration. Vessel operators may use an AMS to manage their ballast water discharges in lieu of ballast water exchange, while the treatment system undergoes approval testing to Coast Guard standards. An AMS may be used to meet the…
Big Ideas Sometimes Come in Small Packages
Hyde Marine’s chemical-free, IMO Type Approved ballast water treatment solution packs performance in a smaller footprint. That’s good news for small vessel operators who may soon find themselves impacted by a problem that previously was thought to be a “bluewater” issue. The notion that ballast water treatment and invasive species are both strictly the domain of big, bluewater liners coming from the Far East and other exotic locales quickly went out the porthole last November when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its long-awaited, updated draft Vessel General Permit (VGP) rule. The new rules potentially bring regulations to bear on vessels as small as 79 feet LOA and others, depending on service and routing.
UPDATE: OMB Declares USCG BWT Standard as "Final"
Draft USCG ballast water rule now finalized, according to OMB. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) completed its review of the Coast Guard's Ballast Water Discharge Standard regulations in accordance with Executive Order 12866, and changed its designation from an Interim Final Rule to a Final Rule on February 24, 2012. The Coast Guard is preparing it for publication in the Federal Register, and expects to complete the administrative process within 30 days. John Morris of the U.S. Coast Guard's Environmental Standards Division said in a prepared statement, "We are not at liberty to discuss details of the rule until it is actually published, but wanted to clear up confusion about its status.
USCG Seeks Ballast Water Treatment Testing Participants
The U.S. Coast Guard announced the beginning of a program aimed at facilitating the installation of experimental shipboard ballast water treatment systems. Foreign and domestic vessel owners that participate in the program may be granted equivalencies to U.S. ballast water regulations for participating vessels. The Shipboard Technology Evaluation Program (STEP) is one of several Coast Guard initiatives aimed at reducing the introduction of nonindigenous species (NIS) to U.S. waters through ballast water. The impacts of NIS on our environment, food supply, economy, health and overall biodiversity of our waterways are significant and increasing. "This is one of the many things we are doing to protect our waters," said Capt.
