Invasive Species

At long last, Coast Guard proposes new rule on ballast water

Since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River have been inundated by aquatic invasive species from ocean-going shipping. 50 years later, the Coast Guard is proposing a new rule to finally establish ballast water discharge standards and prevent invasive species introductions from commercial shipping. Public comment is open until December 4, 2009.

This year, administrative action, in the form of the Coast Guard rule, is poised to make significant progress in addressing this ecological crisis.

Broadly, the rulemaking is excellent in several regards, but needs to be improved in a few critical areas.
The strong points:

• The proposed rule requires vessels to implement on-board technology to clean their ballast water in a two-phased process. The ‘Phase-Two’ national ballast water discharge standard is excellent. It is as strong as California’s—the most stringent standard of any state—and one thousand times stronger than the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO).
• The rule is being made under the National Invasive Species Act, which does not undermine the authority of the Clean Water Act or the ability of states to protect their waters from biological pollution.
• The rule regulates ballast discharges from most lakers, which operate exclusively on the Great Lakes. Lakers do not introduce invasive species, but they can spread them from lake to lake.

The rulemaking can be improved in regards to the following provisions:

• The “Phase-One” standard is set as the IMO standard, and will provide only minimum improvements over ballast water exchange or ballast tank flushing. The “Phase-One” standard should be stronger than the IMO standard.
• The timeline for implementation wouldn’t require existing vessels to begin installing ‘Phase-One’ technology until 2016 at the earliest. Our freshwaters need protection sooner than that!
• A proposed ‘practicability review’ presents a serious concern. The review could allow the Coast Guard to delay implementation of the phase-two standard indefinitely. The rule needs to set a fixed deadline by which all vessels would have to comply with the phase-two standard.

Following the public comment period, the Coast Guard will prepare responses to public comments and the final rulemaking for publication. We may see a final rule in 12-18 months. In the meantime, efforts will shift to advancing improvements to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ballast management program under the Clean Water Act. This contains some of the country’s strongest enforcement provisions to protect water quality. More on the need for efficient and effective coordination between both federal agencies who have clear authority over ballast, will be discussed in future editions of Great Lakes News.

We hope you have had a chance to participate in this important process! When engaging in public comment, it doesn’t matter how long or short, how simple or detailed. What is important is that government hear your voice. In the case of ballast water management we have been fighting to get to this point for decades.

The first policy attempt to control invasive species from ballast was developed back in 1990 in response to the zebra mussel invasion. The U.S. Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act of 1990 (NANPCA) established a voluntary Great Lakes ballast water management program.

When this law was reauthorized in 1996, some incremental improvements were made, such as requiring mandatory ballast tank flushing, and it was renamed the National Invasive Species Act (NISA). There are a number of significant gaps in NISA. Ballast water exchange is the main prevention tool, lakers are exempted from regulation and hitchhikers on hulls are not addressed. NISA came up for reauthorization in 2002. Since that time, Congress was first uninterested and then unable to develop a legislative solution to the invasive species being brought to the U.S. from overseas ships.

The administrative approach through the Coast Guard rule represents a huge step forward in the protection of the Great Lakes. And we’ve reached this point because citizens spoke up. Now that the line is in sight we need one more push to get there.

To learn more about how you can help stop invasive species and take part in this public comment, contact Jennifer Nalbone at jen@glu.org.

© 2010 Great Lakes News.