Alaska Seeks to Clean Up Cruise Ships

With cruise ships plying the Inland Passage in unprecedented numbers, Alaska is leading a movement to clean up what has become a global concern: the discharge of millions of gallons of highly contaminated waste-water from luxury vessels.

Calling the cruise ship discharges “a disgrace,” Gov. Tony Knowles Wednesday called a special session of the Legislature to adopt what would become the world’s first comprehensive monitoring, testing and control measures on the $11-billion-a-year industry.

The proposed regulations, which the industry has pledged to comply with even before they become law, could set a model for California, Washington, Florida and the Caribbean in their increasing attempts to monitor the environmental effects of the hundreds of thousands of floating tourists who sail along their coasts each year.

“They come to Alaska to see incredible vistas, clean water, unparalleled marine habitat. To promote that and at the same time be guilty of polluting, that is something I think their own customers will not accept,” said Knowles.

Alaska’s proposed regulations--overwhelmingly adopted by the state House but stalled by a committee chairman in the Senate--are being studied by California, which convened its own cruise ship environmental task force in January to monitor waste discharges and analyze their potential effect on the marine environment and public health. The task force will report to the Legislature in 2003 on proposed changes to California law.

“Anybody who’s looking at the cruise ship industry is watching what Alaska’s doing right now,” said Kira Schmidt of the San Francisco-based Bluewater Network, which has worked to step up cruise ship regulation across the country.

Alaska’s proposed new standards, which go well beyond existing federal and international law, already are sparking a program of waste treatment upgrades. Cruise executives said the entire fleet serving Alaska should be upgraded to provide sharply reduced emissions by 2003.

“We’re really at the leading edge in Alaska,” said John Hansen of the Northwest Cruise Ship Assn., an industry group. “There’s a lot of concern in the public expressed about keeping Alaska clean and pristine, and we agree with that. We are on the same wavelength as the state in terms of making absolutely sure that the quality of the environment is kept high.”

While Alaska is a relative newcomer to the cruise ship industry, it has seen cruise ship traffic swell exponentially over the past decade: By midsummer, 45,000 passengers each day are sailing its glacier-rimmed waters, the equivalent of the state’s third-largest city. The new traffic jams are in some of the most scenic and pristine waters on Earth, the fjords, channels and passages of the Alexander Archipelago.

“Not to be gross, but all they do is eat all day. What do they do with the waste?” asked Michele Brown, head of Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

The answers the state found, after it conducted the first large-scale testing of cruise ship waste-water last year, were alarming.

Only one of 80 samples met all federal standards. Most disconcerting, 70% of the discharge samples from galleys, showers and laundries--the so-called harmless gray water that is dumped untreated into coastal waters--showed high fecal bacteria levels, some as high as 50,000 times the standard for treated sewage.

Fecal coliform in elevated levels represents not only a human health threat but can build up in shellfish and can pose a threat to a wide variety of aquatic life by starving oxygen out of the water. Heavy metals, found in some of the cruise ship discharges, can be toxic.

The legislation cleared the Alaska House on a 35-3 vote but was stalled in the Senate this week by Sen. John Cowdery, chairman of the transportation committee, who asked why cruise ships should face stricter treatment standards than some municipal sewage facilities and how would the state pay for an estimated $7.5 million in improvements that would be required to the state-run ferry system.

The Legislature ended its regular session at midnight Tuesday without final passage, but Knowles refused to give up, calling a special session for May 21, when he said he is confident the lawmakers would pass it.

Still, the last-minute demise of the cruise ship bill Tuesday night worried environmental activists, who feared the cruise industry--armed with four of the state’s five top-paid lobbyists--might ultimately win less stringent restrictions.

Existing international restrictions on cruise ships are minimal. The 1978 international marine pollution convention sets limits on dumping of garbage, plastics and oil. No restrictions exist on gray-water discharges, and an amendment to limit raw sewage dumping to 12 miles offshore is not in effect because it has never been ratified by participating nations.

Cruise ships largely escaped Environmental Protection Agency permitting requirements under the Clean Water Act of 1977, and though they are required to treat raw sewage before dumping it in near-shore areas, Alaska was the first to ask whether treatment devices were working.

Only after a series of violations were discovered in the past few years--in the worst, Royal Caribbean agreed to pay an $18-million fine in 1999 for dumping waste oil in U.S. waters, then covering it up--did Congress act. Legislation authored by U.S. Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), scheduled to take effect this summer, limited where and how waste-water could be discharged in some Alaskan waters.

The proposed state law goes even further, establishing an unprecedented program of monitoring and enforcement and requiring that gray water meet the same discharge standards as treated sewage.

“We’re not asking any more of the cruise ship industry than we ask of every other industry in Alaska. No other industry gets by with the types of discharges that these guys have,” said Chip Thoma, a Juneau activist who has pushed for stronger regulation.

On the sleek, 10-story, 1,440-passenger Zaandam that sailed into Juneau this week, Holland America has spent $2.5 million to install a treatment system that, through a series of filters, bacterial action and ultraviolet radiation, will turn all of the ship’s sewage and gray water into water that is nearly drinkable.

“When you look at shore-side facilities, they have nowhere near this level of treatment,” said Rich Softye, the company’s vice president for compliance.