Sludge Watch ==> Seattle: Cruise Ship Sludge could go to County Waste

[Maureen Reilly]

Last updated September 18, 2007 11:27 p.m. PT

Cruise line sludge could go to county waste plant
By KRISTEN MILLARES BOLT
P-I REPORTER

The King County Council has pledged to lend its technical expertise to help 
the Port of Seattle and cruise lines figure out what to do with the 4.2 
million gallons of sewage sludge the ships produce every year as they pass 
through here on their way to Alaska.

Last December, the Washington state Department of Ecology asked the cruise 
industry and the port to study sending the waste ashore. A preliminary study 
found that pumping it out into trucks that would take it to the South 
Treatment Plant in Renton is the best option -- and one not too different 
from what some cruise ships already do.

>From there, the human waste would be treated and become part of the King 
County Wastewater Division's program to reuse the fecal matter as fertilizer 
on farms and recovering forestlands.

"The question is whether this cruise industry that we've coveted and asked 
to come here is, as an industry, being protective of the natural resources 
that we're trying to showcase," said Councilman Larry Phillips, chairman of 
the Regional Water Quality Committee.

"If you have the sludge on the ship here, but are dumping it into the ocean, 
is that the best way to do it? If you have several thousand people on board 
... well, what are you going to do with the stuff now that it is 12 miles to 
sea?"

The King County Wastewater Division can handle the waste, which otherwise is 
dumped into the ocean 12 miles from shore because of an international 
agreement that extends U.S. protections against sewage sludge dumping by 
nine miles.

Whether the cruise lines will change their practices is to be decided by the 
Port of Seattle, the North West CruiseShip Association and the Department of 
Ecology, all parties to an agreement that governs the treatment and disposal 
of cruise ship sewage in Puget Sound and the Olympic Coast National Marine 
Sanctuary.

Under that agreement, first struck in 2004 and revised annually, untreated 
sewage cannot be dumped within Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, 
south of the international boundary with Canada, as well as the Olympic 
Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

That agreement's success has depended in part on the cruise lines' continual 
investment into more advanced onboard sewage treatment systems whose results 
are comparable to King County's. After sewage is treated with those onboard 
systems -- which first strain much of the more solid fecal matter from it -- 
it can be discharged into Puget Sound within one nautical mile of the port 
berth while the ship is traveling at 6 knots.

King County estimated that the average Alaska-bound cruise ship discharges 
about 360,000 gallons of treated sewage during the two days it spends in 
Washington waters. Wayne Grotheer, the Seattle port's director of seaport 
finance and asset management, and John Hansen, president of the North West 
CruiseShip Association, said the agreement is working.

"We don't see the benefits -- environmentally or cost -- to changing" that 
agreement, Hansen said. But he said the cruise lines "are willing to discuss 
alternative means for handling biosolids" -- the sanitized name for the 
concentrated sludge produced during the sewage treatment process.

Neither Grotheer nor Hansen's comments seemed to support amending the 
agreement to specify onshore disposal of the 28,000 gallons of sewage sludge 
strained from each ship's sewage during a seven-day trip to Alaska.

Cruise ships also can burn their waste, then dump the ashes or send them 
ashore. Puget Sound Clean Air Agency Executive Director Dennis McLerran has 
expressed concerns about burning sludge near populated areas.

In a memo given to commissioners and the public in June, Grotheer and 
another port staffer said the port expected to begin an "in-depth public 
outreach program" about the matter after which it was possible that the port 
would pursue further action.

Last year, the port expected 196 cruise ship calls and about 368,000 
passengers. It is planning to open a new $60 million cruise facility at 
Terminal 91 by 2009, tearing down the $18 million Terminal 30 building -- 
built in 2003 -- to make way for a major container terminal.

Fred Felleman, the Northwest representative of the non-profit Friends of the 
Earth, called for the port and the cruise lines to study how much it would 
cost to pump the sludge from their holds onto trucks onshore. Felleman also 
asked King County to determine how much it would charge for the service.

"Ecology asked to have the sludge discussion a year ago," Felleman said. 
"We've now agreed to have the sludge discussion, rather than actually having 
the sludge discussion."

P-I reporter Kristen Millares Bolt can be reached at 206-448-8142 or 
kristenbolt at seattlepi.com.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/332246_port19.html