Please find two links below, a Press Release from the NYS Attorney General's office, and a separate article from the Albany Times Union on a NYS supreme court ruling that upholds the new NYS ballast rules.
- J. Nalbone
NY Attorney Generals office:
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/media_center/2009/may/may29a_09.html
ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO ANNOUNCES ENVIRONMENTAL VICTORY FOR GREAT LAKES AND OTHER NEW YORK WATERWAYS REGARDING INVASIVE SPECIES
ALBANY, N.Y. (May 29, 2009) - Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced another victory in his efforts to protect New York state waterways from environmental damage caused by the dumping of contaminated ballast water by large commercial ships.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Hon. Robert A. Sackett agreed with the state of New York and dismissed a challenge to permit requirements issued by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation designed to control discharges of invasive species to the Great Lakes and other waterways by ocean-going vessels. Specifically, the court rejected the arguments of a coalition of large shipping interests claiming that the state had illegally placed further restrictions on a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) nationwide discharge permit for these vessels.
“This decision is a critical win for New York’s right and responsibility to protect our Great Lakes and resources,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “The Court’s decision not only defends our state’s actions, but affirms our right to take necessary measures to fight the plague of invasive species. Ensuring the continued health of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario is vital to our quality of life, our economic growth and our environment.”
Attorney General Cuomo has led efforts to fight the enormous threat that invasive species pose to the overall health and sustainability of New York and the Great Lakes. In July 2008, Cuomo, together with five other Attorneys General from states bordering the Great Lakes and several environmental groups, won a Federal Court decision confirming that large vessels and other oceangoing freight ships can no longer discharge pollutant-containing ballast water without a permit. Earlier in 2008, New York signed onto a successful amicus brief in support of a Michigan law to control invasive species pollution by vessels. The Michigan law was upheld in Federal Court, defeating a legal challenge by various shipping companies.
Lake Erie and Lake Ontario border Western New York and the North Country and are critical to the environmental and socio-economic infrastructure of the regions. Ballast water discharges occur when a vessel is moved from one body of water to another and the water the ship carries with it is released. When these releases are untreated, they can contain transported invasive species that disrupt the natural ecosystem in the second body of water.
Untreated vessel ballast discharges have resulted in the introduction of more than 180 aquatic invasive species into the Great Lakes, and have similarly affected other U.S. waters. These discharges are a particularly harmful type of pollution because the invading species are able to reproduce and grow over time, allowing them to overwhelm entire ecosystems. They prey upon native species, causing population declines and harm to commercial and recreational fisheries. Billions of dollars in damage to fisheries, recreation, and public infrastructure is directly attributed to the aquatic invasive species epidemic.
· The zebra mussel, introduced into a small area of the Great Lakes in the late 1980s, has propagated into all five Great Lakes and many other North American waterways, reaching densities of up to one million per square yard and causing costly damage to water and power plants by clogging intake pipes.
· Invasive viruses and toxins, such as viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) and Type E botulism, have been implicated in recent large-scale fish and bird die-offs.
· Some native species, like unionid clams in the western basin of Lake Erie, are nearly extinct. Small organisms at the base of the food web also have been severely affected.
The devastating effect of invasive species has had direct human implications.
· A 2001 EPA report indicated that a strain of cholera that killed 10,000 people in Latin America in 1991 was introduced by the bilge water of a Chinese freighter. The strain then came to the U.S. in the ballast tanks of ships from Latin America, but was fortunately detected in oyster and finfish samples in the Alabama port where the ships anchored.
· The Department of Agriculture spends millions of dollars each year to combat invasive species. A study by the General Accounting Office estimated that the total annual economic losses and associated costs related to invasive species totals $137 billion - more than double the annual economic damage caused by all natural disasters in the United States.
The case is being handled by Assistant Attorney General Timothy Hoffman, Environmental Scientist Dr. Ray Vaughan and Deputy Bureau Chief of Attorney General Cuomo’s Environmental Protection Bureau Lisa Burianek under the supervision of Special Deputy Attorney General Katherine Kennedy.
Attachment: Port of Oswego Decision Order and Judgment
>>>
Albany Times Union:
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=805319
Stopping foreign invaders at sea
Ruling: Ships must dump ballast water in ocean to kill fresh-water pests
By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer
First published in print: Saturday, May 30, 2009
ALBANY -- A state Supreme Court justice has upheld rules designed to stop the spread
of foreign invasive species into the Hudson River and Great Lakes from ballast water dumped by international freighters.
Adopted in November by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the rules require freighters to flush ballast tanks at least 50 miles out in the open ocean to kill any fresh-water foreign invaders that may be present.
Starting in 2012, ships will be required to treat ballast water on-board to kill invasive species. Such technology is under development, but has not been perfected.
Ballast is water that ships take in for stability and trim before a voyage. Once the ship arrives at its destination, it may release ballast -- and any living organism that hitched a ride.
In his May 21 ruling, state Supreme Court Justice Robert Sackett dismissed challenges to the rules brought by the Port of Albany as well as the Port of Oswego, the Great Lakes Port Association, the Canadian Shipowners Association and the Montreal-based shipper Canfornav Inc.
"It is undisputable that ballast water on ocean-going vessels ... is a source of significant potential and actual biological pollution for the state's water systems, in the form of harmful aquatic invasive species," Sackett said in the ruling.
Port of Albany General Manager Richard Hendrick said the new rules could shut down the port, subject vessels to costly delays while treatment is underway, or divert cargo to ports in other states with less stringent rules. "If anything like this is done, it should be on a national basis," he said.
Ballast water from foreign ships dumped in the Great Lakes and Hudson has been blamed for introducing invaders such as zebra mussels, tiny mollusks that line lake bottoms and clog power plant water intakes, and a fatal fish virus called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia that turned up in state waters in mid-2006.
Zebra mussels are estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damage since the invader from southern Russia turned up in the Great Lakes some two decades ago. "By weight, half of the biomass of the Hudson River is now zebra mussels," said Jim Tierney, DEC assistant commissioner for water resources. Biomass is plants and animals in an ecosystem.
The state sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency several years ago to force it to create ballast discharge rules. After EPA issued rules that the state thought were too weak, New York formed its own rules modeled on California's, the strictest in the nation.
International shipping is spreading most alien species into foreign waters, said James T. Carlton, a marine sciences professor at Williams College. More than 7,000 marine species travel the world in ballast water daily, Carlton said, in what is known as "global bioflow."
Every hour, he noted, more than 2 million gallons of ballast water are released into U.S. waters, making ballast the likely source of the largest volume of foreign organisms released on a daily basis into American ecosystems.
Brian Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or by e-mail at bnearing@timesunion.com
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Distributed without profit to ESA Great Lakes District who have expressed an interest in receiving aquatic invasive species information for research and educational purposes.
