From the Duluth News Tribune, by John Myers
Great Lakes shipping could be significantly affected by a Thursday court ruling that ship's ballast water must be regulated as pollution, port officials and environmentalists say.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to immediately repeal regulations exempting ship operators from having to obtain permits that regulate the discharge of pollution.
The decision appears to force the EPA into regulating ballast, including setting standards on the level of pollution allowed.
More will be known after an April 15 court-ordered meeting of the parties and judge.
"This is a huge decision. It forces the EPA to take long-overdue action to keep invasive species out of the Great Lakes and all U.S. waters," said Jordan Lubetkin of the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes office. "It's not exactly clear how this will proceed, or how soon.... But it means that any ship now coming into the Great Lakes or any other U.S. port will need a permit. The problem is, there's no standard set. The EPA, by their inaction up to now, has really hung the shipping industry out there."
Ray Skelton, environmental and government affairs director for the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, called the decision "lunatic fringe."
"Nobody's been planning to deal with this because it would be impossible to do. We're assuming it will be overturned," he said. "Even if EPA tried to enforce it, they couldn't begin to do the job. It would shut things down."
EPA officials in Washington hadn't heard of the decision until Friday.
"The agency is currently reviewing the decision and discussing available options," said Dave Ryan, EPA spokesman. The agency has 60 days to appeal the decision.
In 1999, the Washington, D.C.-based Ocean Conservancy and four other environmental groups petitioned the EPA to start regulating ballast, claiming the Clean Water Act prohibits the discharge of pollutants, including biological materials such as invasive species, into U.S. waters without a permit.
When the EPA refused to act, the groups filed a lawsuit in federal court in 2003. San Francisco Bay, like the Great Lakes, has been hit hard by exotic species, most of which came to the area in the ballast of ships.
In her 18-page decision, Illston ruled that the EPA does not have the authority to exempt an entire class of discharge from regulation, likening ballast water to stormwater runoff as a category of water pollution to be regulated.
Ships use water in their ballast to aid in steering, especially when they are not carrying cargo, and the volume of water can add up. According to the judge's decision, a ship in the Great Lakes can contain as much as 14 million gallons of ballast water, while seagoing ships can carry twice that much. In all, it's estimated that the amount of ballast water discharged in U.S. ports annually exceeds 21 billion gallons.
As ocean-going ships arrive in Great Lakes ports to pick up grain and other materials, scientists say they may be carrying exotic fish, mussels or organisms that could wreak havoc here -- following past invaders such as zebra mussels, spiny water fleas, goby and ruffe.
Experts say at least 40 more species in Western European ports are candidates to make the move across the Atlantic to take hold in the Great Lakes.
The issue of ballast controls hasn't moved far in Congress, but it's advancing on two other fronts. The U.S. Coast Guard began reviewing ballast rules last year and will hold a public hearing on the issue in Cleveland in May. And state lawmakers in Michigan, frustrated at the lack of federal action, in March proposed tough new state laws.
Industry officials have been working since 1989 to find an economical way to filter or clean ballast water. But officials say there's no practical or affordable technology to clean ballast water on board ships to a level that would, for example, remove zebra mussel larvae.
About 1,200 ships visit the Twin Ports each year, about 100 of which are salties. Exotic species brought into other parts of the Great Lakes also can be moved around within the lakes by Great Lakes freighters.
