U.S. Water News Online
PORTLAND, Maine -- Maine's Department of Environmental Protection is launching a new permit system that requires discharges by cruise ships to be as clean as wastewater treated on shore.
Cruise ships will be prohibited from dumping wastewater within three miles of the shore unless they can meet the same water quality standards as municipal treatment plants.
"We have pretty sweeping authority," said Pam Parker, co-leader of the DEP's cruise ship program. "This is the first waste discharge license for cruise ships in the United States, if not the world."
The rules apply to passenger ships that have at least 500 beds.
From the point of view of the cruise ship industry, Maine's initiative will have little impact, said Christine Fischer, spokeswoman for the International Council of Cruise Lines.
Fischer said council members, who include more than 90 percent of the cruise market in North America, have already agreed not to discharge wastewater within four miles of the nation's coastline.
"The cruise ships are already doing this on their own," she said.
But Joe Payne of Friends of Casco Bay said the rules are significant because the state will no longer depend on voluntary guidelines to protect its waters.
"Now Maine is in control," he said. "We are in the driver's seat, and we have standards."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to designate Casco Bay as a no-discharge zone this winter, putting the bay off-limits for any sewage discharges from tankers, freighters and cruise ships, as well as any pleasure boats equipped with on-board toilets.
Cruise ships brought a record number 45,225 passengers to the port of Portland in 2005. But as the passenger count is going up, the number of visiting cruise ships is going down.
Twenty-nine ships stopped in Portland this year, down 45 percent from the peak year of 2001, according to Jeff Monroe, the city's transportation director.
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