EPA's proposed rulemaking

On August 28, 2009 the US EPA posted the proposed rulemaking for ECA compliant air emissions in the internal waters of the USA.

I did not read the full text of the ECA document, but had some e-mail exchanges with a US consultant.

The question I had was in regard to ECA compliance for the St. Lawrence Seaway. As everyone knows, there is no provision for innocent passage in an ECA, the ship has to comply with the ECA requirements. Which for a Canadian ship sailing from Montreal to Lake Ontario means it has to meet with the EPA imposed emission criteria. The implications are that with a rigid ECA application, Canadian ships would need to conform with US emission requirements on internal trade.

Dennis Bryant suggests that there is nothing limiting the EPA from issuing a waiver to Canadian Lakers on the ECA requirements; which would be a nice, neighborly gesture.

The wild card in all of this is the states' liberty to impose more stringent requirements for their waters, as they did in the VGP. The question I have then, could New York void the EPA's waver on ECA compliance for Canadian Lakers by insisting on ECA compliance?

MARPOL Annex I issues

Under current MARPOL regulations, older bilge filtering equipment is "grandfathered". Older ships are permitted to keep existing equipment and are able to repair same, but are required, under resolution MEPC.107(49), to fit new equipment when replacing defective/ non-repairable equipment.

Before MEPC.107(49) was adopted the United States submitted a request for phase-out of existing (older) equipment, requiring the fitting of MEPC.107(49) compliant bilge water treatment system with the next dry-docking of the vessel. This proposal was not adopted, because replacing bilge separators on something like 50,000 ships within a five year span would have been difficult.

It seems the United States keep pushing for this phase out at MEPC meetings, to date it has not been recommended for adoption.

From a practical point of view, the US proposal seems like a mute point. Technical progress and port state control take pretty well care of this matter because:

• Bilge separators (meeting resolution A.393(X) or MEPC.60(33)) can be repaired and do separate oil from water to prevent an oil sheen.
  
• Bilge Alarms A.393(X) compliant have been out of production since 1995; technology has progressed and the after sales market has disappeared, so repair of these units is virtually no longer possible.
• Similarly, the MEPC.60(33) compliant equipment faces the same road to extinction; it's just a matter of a few years before these bilge alarms are no longer repairable.
• By changing older bilge alarms to the MEPC.107(49) compliant unit, the owner (generally) requires an upgrade of the bilge separator to current generation, because the effluent quality from the old coalsecer type separator will not meet the <15>

For ship owners adhering to Green Marine, upgrading to more efficient pollution prevention equipment is one of the criterias to achieve the level of industrial leadership.

The North American ECA

I have to appologize for the speed with which I posted the July 23 blog; I didn't read the whole draft.

The Canada/ USA proposal was endorsed by the "Technical Committee" who found that

• the application met the required guidelines,
  
• the breadth of the ECA was determined through application of the criteria in Appendix II, and was not based or linked to the extent of the EEZ
• approved the proposal to designate an ECA for the coastal waters of the United States and Canada...

My view differs on 2 points. One is that the submission overstates the effort by the proponents in regard to land-based pollution. The other is that the East Coast marine emissions from ships is blown offshore rather than inshore, therefore are based on poor science.

The fact that the most vulnerable area, the Canadian Arctic (north of 60) is being excluded from the ECA suggests poor science.

The ECA will be submitted for approval at MEPC.60, in March 2010.If approved we have an ECA by 2012.