2nd International Ballast Water Treatment
R&D Symposium
IMO London 21-23 July 2003
Symposium objectives
- Update the current status of ballast water treatment R&D around the world and stimulate innovation and investment in global R&D efforts.
- Enhance communication and cooperation between IMO, member countries, the R&D community and ship designers, builders and owners on ballast water treatment issues.
- Provide technical and scientific support to the development and implementation of the international regulatory regime for ballast water management, including international
standards and procedures for the evaluation and approval of new ballast water treatment and management measures.
Symposium Reporting: Updated August, 2003
IMO Announces Ballast Water Convention for '04 February 2004 delegates from the International Maritime Organization, will be gathering for
one of the first major conventions regarding maritime environmental issues of the 21st century. At the Marine Environmental Protection Committee meeting in London July 14-18, experts
announced that they had come to enough agreement on issues to compile an International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments. IMO's Ballast Water Working Group (BWWG) has been working towards this convention for
close to 15 years. The problem of nuisance species invading local ecosystems has been a serious environmental and economic problem for decades. Dr. Thomas Waite of the National
Science Foundation, USA said the current estimated cost of invasive species is about US $137 billion/year. Waite said that the US government recently acknowledged that invasions are the
most dangerous threat to the planet today.
In a world where 75,000 ships transport about 15,000 potentially invading species per week, the topic of regulating the discharge of all ballast water is a very contentious one. As the branch of the
United Nations delegated to address environmental and safety issues in shipping, IMO has been debating the issue and trying to come up with unilateral regulations. The difficulty of this project is
highlighted by the years it has taken to come to some conclusions.
In the last few years, port states throughout the globe have passed legislation to manage ballast water discharging. Such areas include Washington, California and the Great Lakes Region of the US &
Canada. Waite believes the rise in regional laws is a response to the complaint that the process at IMO has been too slow. He points out, however, that the lack of ballast water standards has
stopped everything including local regulations. IMO's BWWG has forged a direction in standards and it is IMO's lead in the development of that standard that will now move the process forward. The Ballast Water Standard
Ship Owners and Port Authorities need to know to what degree or standard a treatment that purifies ballast water must adhere. The standard will determine an acceptable level of
effectiveness to protect local waters. Must 100% of all potential nuisance species be eradicated or will a more reasonable tolerance be allowed? Without this critical issue resolved, ballast
water treatment technologies will not be fully accepted and ballast water legislation has been stymied.
IMO's BWWG has proposed a format upon which the new standard will be based.
Percent Removal vs. Water Quality
Some of the regional legislation has adopted a percent removal quality standard. Percent removal suggests that upon discharge, ballast water must be 90 to 99% free of nuisance
organisms. This method is difficult to enforce since authorities will need to have samples of the original concentration and final concentration of the ballast water to determine the percentage
that has been removed. If ballast water has an ultra-high concentration of undesirables, even at 99.9% removal there may remain quantities of species above a safe limit for adequate protection.
The legislation proposed in the draft IMO Ballast Water convention is based on a water quality
standard, meaning the effluent may not have more than a certain (low) number of viable organisms upon discharge. For example, a water quality standard may state that only 3 living
organisms between 50 & 80 microns in size are allowed per ml of ballast water. This ensures that the number of living species remaining in the ballast water is below a level that would allow
a nuisance species invasion.
The BWWG has not specifically agreed upon the numerical levels for the standard. The numbers currently under consideration are no more than [1-100] viable organisms per cubic meter
greater than [50/80] microns in size; and less than [1/10/100] viable organisms per ml smaller than [50/80] microns and greater than 10 microns in size. A value for specific microbes under
10 microns in size is also being debated. The brackets represent numbers under consideration.
Although much needs to be determined, the decision to adopt a framework for the BW standard is a major break through. Technology vendors for BW treatment finally know their
technologies will need to pass an effluent "end-of-pipe" standard of acceptability. Ship Owners will not have to worry about comparing pre-treatment and post-treatment samples to prove
that their ballast water is acceptable for discharge. Once the standard has been set, legitimate comparisons of technologies can be achieved. Michael Taylor, Australia's delegate to the MEPC, explained that a lot remains to be agreed
upon at the Convention in February. Numbers for standards have yet to be determined, but once decided, the draft Convention allows for some flexibility. Taylor pointed out that the
BWWG is facing uncertainty over what standard the treatment systems will be able to achieve. For that reason, the draft Ballast Water Convention will allow the committee to go back and
alter the effective standards at a future time if necessary.
The Convention for the Control and Management of Ship's Ballast Water and Sediments will be held February 9-13, 2004 in IMO headquarters in London. Comments about the new
legislation were made at the Ballast Water Treatment R&D Symposium at IMO from July 21-23, 2003. |
