Ballast Water Management: The Conundrum Continues
Prior to embarking on a voyage to the United States, shipowners must ensure that they are able to properly manage their ballast water when operating in waters subject to U.S. jurisdiction, which includes utilizing one of the compliance options available or ensuring that the vessel has an extension to its compliance date. The authors of this article discuss the U.S. Coast Guard’s ballast water management systems and the inconsistencies in the international and domestic regimes.
It has been about 15 months since the U.S. Coast Guard (“USCG”) type-approved the first three ballast water management systems (“BWMSs”) in December 2016; three more BWMSs have been type approved since. Yet, ballast water management remains one of the most challenging and frustrating regulatory issues of the past decade because of inconsistencies in the international and domestic regimes. This is largely because the United States is not party to the International Maritime Organization’s (“IMO”) Convention on the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments (the “Convention”). Rather, the United States regulates ballast water unilaterally under the National Invasive Species Act, which differs in certain ways from the Convention, especially when it comes to approving equipment to meet the standards set forth in the Convention and the USCG’s implementing regulations. As such, ballast water compliance challenges remain far from resolved. In some cases, for example, especially with respect to USCG compliance date extensions, the policies continue to evolve on an ad hoc basis, often causing confusion.
To read the full article, please click here.
“Ballast Water Management: The Conundrum Continues,” by Jeanne M. Grasso and Sean T. Pribyl was published in the May 2018 edition of Pratt’s Energy Law Report (Vol. 18-5), an A.S. Pratt Publication, LexisNexis. Reprinted with permission.
This article was first published in the March 2018 edition of Mainbrace, Blank Rome’s quarterly maritime newsletter.