EPA won’t control ballast water discharges

The U.S. EPA will not regulate ballast water discharges from oceangoing ships, the Bush Administration announced September 9, rejecting a petition from 15 environmental groups (Fed. Regist. 2003, 68, 53,165–53,166). Ballast water, the source of 72% of alien species invading the Great Lakes, should remain under the regulatory watch of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), according to the announcement from EPA. USCG staff is now studying proposals for ballast water standards.

The coalition of groups that is demanding a more stringent approach to controlling invasive species petitioned EPA in 1999 to require ships to obtain water pollution permits for ballast discharges under the Clean Water Act (CWA), says Linda Sheehan, director of the Pacific Region of the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group named on the petition.

Current USCG guidelines to exchange ballast water at sea aren’t working, Sheehan says, because they aren’t mandatory for all ships and because ballast water exchange doesn’t remove all the invasive species.

The denial of the petition by EPA officials rests on the argument that USCG’s programs are more likely than water quality permits to curb invasions. The chief programs are the voluntary ballast water exchange guidelines, which were promulgated in 1996 under the National Invasive Species Act, and new discharge standards under review by USCG.

The USCG announced on September 26 (Fed. Regist. 2003, 68, 55,559) that agency staff will be preparing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on two potential ballast water treatment standards based on a score of technologies, including some that haven’t been proven. One standard under review would require the removal of all organisms larger than 0.1 micrometers, and the other would set maximum discharge concentrations for fish, algae, insects, and other groups of organisms. Comments on the proposed scope of the PEIS will be accepted until December 26. Although officials with state and provincial agencies in the Great Lakes basin say they were disappointed by EPA’s decision, that disappointment is tempered by hopes for passage in 2004 of a legislative proposal being debated in Congress, known as the National Aquatic Invasive Species Act (S. 525 and H.R. 5395), says Dennis Schornack, chair of the U.S. section of the International Joint Commission, a U.S.–Canadian watchdog for the Great Lakes.

The legislation would provide $841 million over five years and put USCG in charge of enforcing a discharge standard. Environmental group spokespersons say the bill’s provisions would help curb discharges, but they still want EPA officials to issue a requirement that ships obtain CWA permits. —JANET PELLEY