EPA BALLAST WATER DISCHARGE REGULATIONS ROW

Source: MGN

THE US Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association (WWEMA) says it is “gravely concerned” by the approach being taken by Environmental Protection agency (EPA) to regulate ballast water discharges in its draft National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES).

Responding to the draft WWEMA says that the EPA's approach will do little, if anything, to prevent further release of invasive species into US waters but could potentially stifle the development of urgently needed effective ballast water treatment technologies. The body claims that EPA is “missing a critical opportunity” by not issuing national numeric treatment standards for ballast water discharges, instead opting to only propose use of management practices by vessels for controlling the release of aquatic nuisance species (ANS) from ballast water discharges (e.g., ballast water exchange and saltwater flushing).

WWEMA argues: “At a minimum, the US should ratify the International Maritime Organization (IMO) convention and EPA should adopt the IMO ballast water management discharge performance standards as recently called for by our nation’s own National Academy of Sciences. Failure to ratify the IMO convention and adopt the IMO standard is also placing U.S. industry in an extremely uncompetitive situation with U.S. manufacturers of ballast water treatment technology having to petition other nations to represent them when applying for Type Approval. U.S. industry will suffer as foreign competition moves forward with their final approvals.”

“Commercially available ballast water treatment technology exists and has been proven effective by many credible, independent organizations,” said WWEMA Chairman Tom Mills of Severn Trent Services. “Lloyd’s Register published a report in 2007 describing more than 20 technologies that are in various stages of development, three of which have already received Type Approval. EPA’s contention that it cannot issue numeric treatment standards because technology is not yet commercially available is baseless. The reason these technologies are not in ‘commercial’ application is because there is no uniform, U.S. national standard requiring their use.”