Juneau to Impose $5 Fee on Ship Passengers

By a more than a 2-to-1 margin, voters in Juneau, Alaska, this month approved a plan to impose a fee of $5 per passenger on cruise ships visiting there.

The ballot initiative, which local organizers said was similar to one that failed in 1996, was approved 5,516 to 2,380 in the town of about 30,000, which hosts about 600,000 cruise passengers a year. It came on the heels of a high-profile case in which Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines paid $18 million nationwide to settle Justice Department charges that it dumped oil sludge and other pollutants in waters off Alaska, Los Angeles and other sites.

In August, Royal Caribbean President Jack Williams visited Alaskan towns to apologize for his company’s actions.

Although Juneau City Manager David Palmer said the dumping case “was one of the things that pushed us over the edge,” the lawyer for one of the organizers of the ballot initiative, Joe Geldof of the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Assn., denied it was a major factor in the vote. Instead, Geldof, whose group represents city employees, cited the leap in cruise passenger visits, which have roughly doubled in three years and have “overwhelmed” the small city, now in a budget crunch. Their campaign, called “Five for Juneau,” argued that the $5 charge is the line’s “fair share” of costs of providing service.

The fee is effective March 1, 2000, and Palmer said the city has until Feb. 1 to pass regulations specifying how it will be collected. Exempt from the fee are “noncommercial ships” operated by nonprofit entities and ships with 40 or fewer passengers.