UN sets treatment standard for ballast water
PHOTODISC
A new international treaty regulating the estimated 3–4 billion metric tons of ballast water that annually moves across the world’s oceans in the vast underbellies of commercial ships offers the best hope yet of curbing the spread of alien aquatic species, say many involved with the treaty’s creation. In February, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted the treaty, which sets the first international ballast water treatment performance standard. For the treaty to become effective, 30 countries representing 35% of the world’s shipping tonnage must approve it. According to Andreas Tveteraas, conservation director with the environmental group WWF Norway, approval could take at least a decade “unless shipping nations really take responsibility and ratify the convention rapidly.” He adds, “When it actually starts having an effect, it’ll definitely be one of the most important environmental treaties so far in this millennium.” U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) officials say the treaty will form the basis of a U.S. ballast
A new treaty targets invasive species that get trapped onboard ships.
water treatment program likely to be even more stringent than the IMO standard. Ships take up ballast water in ports of call to maintain stability during transit. When the ships reach their destinations, this water is discharged, effectively relocating organisms ranging in size and phyla from microscopic plants and animals to mussels, crabs, and even schools of fish to a port that may be thousands of miles from their native range. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has billed the subsequent risk of invasions by these species as “the greatest immediate threat to most coastal state ecosystems.” Under the new treaty, ships will be required to exchange ballast water in mid-ocean, which is currently the only feasible management option widely available to shippers. Then, starting in 2009, ships will have to treat their ballast water so that discharges contain fewer than 10 viable organisms greater than or equal to 50 micrometers in size per cubic meter. Smaller vessels will have to comply first, and other existing ships will be phased into regulation by 2016, according to ship size, type, and age. Compliance cost estimates range from $100,000 to $1 million per ship, says Steve Raaymakers, chief technical advisor for IMO’s global ballast water management program. One hitch is that the IMO standard cannot be achieved with currently available technologies, but shipping industry interests and environmentalists alike are not worried. “Now that we have a discharge standard, I’m confident that where there’s a multibillion dollar market; somebody will find a way to meet the standard,” says Kathy Metcalf, maritime affairs director
News Briefs Tyler Prize laureates Three scientists received this year’s Tyler Prize in April. Richard Doll at the University of Oxford (U.K.) was recognized for his extensive ongoing work associating environmental agents with cancer. Hans R. Herren, the chief executive and director general of Insect Physiology and Ecology, based in Nairobi, helped save one of Africa’s most important food crops. He introduced a natural enemy of the mealybug into cassava crops. Yoel Margalith, a professor of entomology and director of the Center for Biological Control at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel), implemented critical biological controls of mosquitoes and blackflies. The University of Southern California (USC) annually awards the prestigious $200,000 prize to people whose discoveries bring worldwide attention and solutions to serious environmental problems. Previous award winners include Werner Stumm (1986). To learn more about the laureates, go to www.usc. edu/dept/LAS/tylerprize/03tyler.
Graduate student award In February, ACS’s Division of Environmental Chemistry awarded 19 graduate students a one-year membership in the division and a subscription to ES&T. The annual award goes to full-time graduate students who are currently enrolled in chemistry, environmental engineering, or other programs that emphasize environmental chemistry at a U.S. educational institution. Awardees must have completed one full year of study and are judged on the basis of their course work, research productivity, and faculty advisor recommendation. For a list of awardees and information about Division Awards, visit www.envirofacs.org/awards.htm.
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Environmental▼News for the Chamber of Shipping of America. Several technologies have been proposed for shipboard treatment of ballast water, including filtration, chemical disinfection, ozonation, ultraviolet light sterilization, hydrocyclonic separation, and sonic bombardment. The primary hurdle has been the lack of a performance standard by which to evaluate the technologies. Standardized analytical methods are also not yet available, but the USCG and the U.S. EPA are developing such protocols, says Raaymakers.
The United States, Australia, and New Zealand have taken the toughest stance on ballast water. These countries, along with environmentalists, had hoped for more from the IMO treaty. “Not enough research has been done to determine whether or not the standards the IMO has issued are protective enough,” says Bivan Patnaik, regulatory coordinator for the USCG’s aquatic nuisance species program. “In developing its own ballast water discharge standard, the USCG, together with EPA, has begun preparing an environmental impact statement to determine
whether it needs “a more protective standard,” Patnaik adds. However, the shipping industry wants to avoid country-by-country regulations. “We need an international regime so every country and every subnational entity, such as our states, don’t go their own way and create a bunch of different requirements that ships may not be able to comply with from one port to another,” Metcalf says. Consequently, the shipping industry is pushing for quick ratification and supports immediate mandatory ballast water exchanges before the treaty takes effect. —KRIS CHRISTEN
Warnings to the public about poor beach water quality are inherently flawed, according to a series of three papers in this issue of ES&T (pp 2497–2504, 2626–2636, 2637– 2648). An entirely new system is needed that prevents swimmers from being exposed to pollution yet avoids closing beaches when the water is fine, say researchers from the University of California, Irvine; Stanford University; the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of California, San Diego; the Orange County Sanitation District; and the County of Orange Geomatics/Land Information System Division. In California, warning signs are posted on beaches when fecal indicator bacteria in shoreline water exceed state standards. This determination is often based on a single grab sample, and the decision to act is “binary” in nature—either a warning sign is posted or not, with no intermediate information. Similar programs exist nationwide, sponsored in part by the Federal Beaches Environmental and Coastal Health Act passed in October 2000. “One question that frequently comes up is, Can the accuracy of public reporting be improved by decreasing the turnaround time between when a sample is collected and the results are known?” says
PHOTODISC
New beach warning system needed
New research suggests that this sign may be the wrong approach.
Stan Grant, a professor of environmental engineering at Irvine and the papers’ lead author. The current microbial analysis takes almost 24 hours to complete, but a complex web of physical and biological factors—from tidal variations to seasonal rainfall patterns—means that measurements are often based on water that has already come and gone (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2002, 36, 368A–369A). Some scientists advocate faster indicators to deal with the problem, but Grant’s statistical analysis questions that solution. “Even if the turnaround time was reduced to every 10 minutes, the error rates
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could still be quite high,” he says. “The paper identifies a more fundamental problem; specifically, these binary advisory schemes appear to be intrinsically error-prone.” Grant recommends switching to a continuously varying “analog” system, similar to ozone monitoring programs in American cities. “One approach would be to assign a letter grade to beaches, for example, ‘A’ to ‘F’,” he says. Heal the Bay, a conservation group dedicated to protecting Santa Monica Bay, has adopted such a strategy for reporting bay pollution. “Of course, the devil is in the details of how the letters are calculated,” Grant says. He and his coworkers have developed a simple forecasting algorithm to predict water quality, which uses probability theory and estimates of tide range and water quality over the previous 30 days. Such an algorithm could be expanded, he says, or scientists could apply more sophisticated approaches like artificial intelligence. Implementing this kind of program would probably cost less than the current system, according to Grant, because it would require less updating. “The tough part will be in developing software tools that take what we’ve done as a theoretical exercise and make it into something turnkey for managers,” he says. Mark Sobsey, a microbiologist and environmental engineer at the University of North Carolina,
