Editors note: This story is part of an occasional series of Echo reports on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 20, 2009
Preventing shipborne organisms from damaging the Great Lakes ecosystem is one target of the Obama Administration’s $475 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Ships carry ballast water to make them more stable as their cargo is offloaded. When they take on more cargo, they flush the ballast back into the lake or ocean. That water can carry from foreign ports plants and animals that compete with native organisms for habitat and food.
Zebra mussels are an invasive species that arrived through ballast water
There are only a few experimental ballast water treatment systems in use, but a $9 million increase in funding from the proposed federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative could help agencies develop and test more.
Ballast is blamed for the introduction of 30 percent of the Great Lakes’ invasive species, including zebra and quagga mussels, which have fundamentally changed the region’s food web.
The Environmental Protection Agency could receive $2 million from the restoration initiative to develop tests of the effectiveness of ballast treatments, said Enesta Jones, a spokesperson for the EPA.
These tests measure effectiveness how well treatment systems kill various organisms, she said.
As an alternative to ballast treatment, saltwater ships can flush out their ballast tanks with ocean saltwater before entering the Great Lakes, said Penny Herring, with the U.S Coast Guard’s Research and Development Center.
About 90 percent of the saltwater ships do that, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
“But NOAA has done studies on physical flushing, and found that while it physically helps, it doesn’t eliminate species in the tanks,” said Jen Nalbone, campaign director of navigation and invasive species for Great Lakes United. “Ballast water treatment should give us a much higher level of protection.”
The downside to treatment is that it is expensive. But the U.S Coast Guard would put some of the restoration initiative funding toward making it easier for shippers and manufacturers to become involved in its Shipboard Technology Evaluation Program, or STEP, Herring said.
This program provides an incentive for shippers to use experimental ballast water treatment. Many shippers are reluctant to invest in experimental systems, because of their cost and because the systems might not meet future requirements.
But the Coast Guard will consider ships involved with this program as abiding by future ballast water discharge standard regulations, Herring said.
“In return, the shipper agrees to have the ballast water tested for a period of time, so that the Coast Guard can determine whether or not that type of equipment actually does work when installed on ship,” he said.
The goal is to get treatment systems into the Great Lakes quickly, he said. The program now has four ships using experimental systems.
Glen Nekvasil, vice president of corporate communications for the Lake Carriers’ Association, said his group is willing to cooperate with the efforts because their ships are already being tested.
The ships in the Lake Carriers’ Association never leave the Great Lakes, but they could transfer to other Great Lakes ports the invasive species introduced by ocean-going vessels, Nekvasil said.
“We’re kind of a victim here,” he said. “Our ballast only contains what’s in the Great Lakes.”
Although the $4 million the Coast Guard could receive from the restoration initiative would not help all ships in the Great Lakes, it could make the process of becoming involved in the STEP program easier by reducing costs, Herring said.
“If we can get some money from restoration initiative program, then we can pass it along as a further incentive to shippers and vendors, to defray some of the cost of installation,” he said.
The decreased costs would be a large incentive, because installation of treatment systems could cost up to $20 million, depending on the ship, Nekvasil said.
Help with treatment is important. But the restoration initiative does not address how to regulate it, Jones said.
Several Great Lakes states, such as New York, Michigan and Wisconsin, have their own ballast water requirements. But shippers complain that they are not uniform.
The U.S Coast Guard is working on a federal ballast water discharge standard that could be released for public comment as early as next week, Nalbone said.
“If we pass the regulation this year, we’re going to be on the cutting edge of ballast water treatment installation,” she said. “It won’t be an option, it will be a requirement to install the technology.”