Waters near B.C. have become the cruise industry’s dumping grounds, report says
Posted July 12, 2022 9:05 pm.
Last Updated July 12, 2022 9:26 pm.
A new report suggests the waters off of B.C. have become the cruise industry’s toilet bowl.
The report, written by environmental organizations Stand.earth and West Coast Environmental Law, finds ships dump their toxic wastewater along our coast since Canada has more relaxed cruise ship pollution laws.
Michael Bissonette, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, says stricter rules in nearby U.S. states have helped lead to this situation.
“Places like Alaska, Washington, that are neighbors on the west coast, deal with a lot of the same problems as us, and might have the same interests as us, but they’ve managed to have much stricter regulations of this industry,” said Bissonette.
“There’s more and more cruise ships in our waters that it’s really striking Canada did not keep up with those regulations.”
Related link:
The report looked at three sources of pollution: sewage, grey water – which comes from things like washing machines and showers – and wash water, which comes from cleaning systems known as scrubbers and accounts for most of the pollution.
“It cleans the emissions that are being produced by these ships into the air and it cleans some of that pollution out of them, unfortunately what ends up happening with these scrubbers is that the pollution is actually just displaced, into the water,” explained Bissonette.
While Transport Canada announced new measures to address cruise ship pollution earlier this year, Bissonnette says they don’t go far enough.
“Measures did not address scrubber wash water, which as I said earlier is really far and away the largest source of marine pollution from these ships, so it’s great to see movement on sewage and grey water but we still have some serious concerns about the pollution being generated by these ships.”
Cruise ships started to return to Vancouver in April after more than two years without one showing up in the harbour due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Back in April, Tourism Vancouver said each cruise shipload of tourists brings an estimated $3-million into the local economy, and there are more than 300 ship visits to the city scheduled between the time ships returned and November.
With files from Mike Lloyd
