Are You Ready?

As a reminder, pending a last minute extension of the deadline to issue a permit governing incidental discharges, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") has advised it intends on issuing a final permit on December 18, 2008 to cover 28 individual discharge streams incidental to the normal operation of commercial vessels under the Clean Water Act ("CWA"). EPA also advises that it is unlikely that EPA will obtain state certification from Oregon or Wisconsin and may not receive state certification from California and Hawaii before the court ordered December 19, 2008 deadline. Failure to obtain state certification means that the General Permit will not be effective for those states until certification is completed. The following is provided to assist in making sure the commercial vessel industry is ready for this new regime.

Background

As we reported in previous advisories on this topic, on June 17, 2008, EPA issued a draft general permit covering discharges incidental to the normal operation of a vessel. EPA took this action because various environmental groups were successful in suing EPA claiming that the vessel discharge exemption that had been in place for nearly 35 years was illegal under the CWA. A deadline of December 19, 2008 has been set by a federal district court establishing a compliance date when such discharges would be prohibited unless permitted. The following are our previous advisories on this subject.

http://www.blankrome.com/index.cfm?contentID=37&itemID=1663;

http://www.blankrome.com/index.cfm?contentID=37&itemID=1653.

Did You Review Your Discharges?

The draft Vessel General Permit ("VGP") covers vessel discharges in waters of the United States (i.e. out to three nautical miles), including waters in all states and territories. The draft VGP provides specific requirements for 28 potential vessel discharges. The discharge types include:

  • Bilge water
  • Ballast water
  • Deck washdown and runoff
  • Anti-fouling leachate from hull coatings
  • Aqueous film forming foam
  • Boiler/economizer blowdown
  • Cathodic protection
  • Chain locker effluent
  • Controllable pitch propeller hydraulic fluid
  • Distillation and reverse osmosis brine
  • Elevator pit effluent
  • Firemain systems
  • Freshwater layup
  • Gas turbine wash water
  • Graywater
  • Motor gasoline and compensating discharge
  • Non-oily machinery wastewater
  • Refrigeration and air condensate
  • Rudder bearing lubrication
  • Seawater cooling overboard discharge
  • Seawater piping biofouling prevention
  • Small boat engine wet exhaust
  • Sonar dome discharge
  • Stern tube oily discharge
  • Underwater ship husbandry
  • Welldeck discharges
  • Graywater mixed with sewage
  • Exhaust gas scrubber wash water discharge

Have You Prepared A Plan And Set Up A Recordkeeping And Reporting Program?

In order to be prepared to implement this new regime, owners and operators should have already prepared for the December 19, 2008 deadline. While there is a six to nine month grace period for owners to file the Notice of Intent to be covered under the final General Permit, compliance with the permit provisions will be required as soon as the final VGP is issued. Specifically, the draft VGP sets forth various monitoring, inspection, and reporting procedures. Vessels will be required to conduct and log routine self-inspections and monitoring of all areas of the vessel that the permit encompasses. The draft VGP also requires vessels to conduct an annual comprehensive inspection designed to ensure that hard-to-reach areas of the vessel are also inspected for permit compliance. In addition, there are corrective actions and reporting requirements depending on the type of permit violation. Accordingly, owners and operators should have already established a program to implement this new regime and issued draft compliance guidelines for its personnel. In addition, although EPA has advised that there are no major surprises in final VGP, owners and operators should be prepared to quickly review the VGP and compare it to the draft VGP to make the necessary changes to finalize their compliance program.

Have You Trained Your Company And Crew?

There will be little time to train company personnel and crew members. Action should have already been taken to train such personnel in order to successfully implement this program on December 19, 2008.

Conclusions And Recommendations

Owners and operators should work with their compliance staff to review current plans to make sure they are ready for this new program on December 19, 2008, assuming the compliance date is not extended. There are serious penalties for failure to comply with this program. Keep in mind that there are likely to be some changes in the final VGP that will need to be quickly incorporated into the draft compliance program put in place by a company in order to implement the final VGP. Preparation, training, and shoreside verification of shipboard compliance will minimize the enforcement risks created by this new regulatory program.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.