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viernes, 20 de febrero de 2009

An individual pollution perspective

Source: Port Strategy

David Jacobs of CWA has a very personal view of pollution issues. A ship's master for many years, he is now a senior consultant and acts as arbitration for various maritime pollution cases.

His point is that the regulations have been of enormous help to the masters of vessels - who were previously forced to make the decision between using their company's money on, for example collecting garbage or disposing of waste oil. At the same time his route, which took him through various navigation channels, meant he could see the damage done to the environment by careless dumping.

He says: "It was always a difficult decision between being the 'Bad Guy' and using port disposal services and being the 'Good Guy' in the company eyes and getting rid of material at sea. The crunch really came when Germany started delivering green sacks to the ship's side with a mandatory charge. Masters then had a legitimate reason to use antipollution measures, as they could show their companies they had no choice."

Mr Jacobs goes on to say that with the advent of the International Safety Management code, more power was given to the captains to use money. Port state inspections (which could result in a vessel being detained), clamped down hard on the inspections of vessel's oily record books and began actively surveying dirty oil tanks etc. Engineers who previously had pumped out engine room bilges during the night at sea, suddenly stopped this practice.

"Port state inspectors who were generally ex-seafarers, knew that vessels had to generate waste, and they wanted to see it, or where it had gone. So, nowadays nearly all ports have reception facilities for waste disposal," he adds.

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