If you've been worrying about the Sept. 30 deadline for obtaining a newly-required federal ballast-discharge permit for your boat, relax. You won't have to get one after all.
Riding to the rescue just in time, Congress has passed legislation that essentially exempts recreational boaters from a recent court ruling that would have required owners of pleasure boats to secure such permits. If lawmakers had not acted, operating your boat without one would have been illegal after Sept. 30.
Congress has come to the rescue of recreational boaters who feared that a court ruling might force them to obtain ballast water discharge permits, just like ocean-going cargo vessels.
But don't forget about the ballast–water issue entirely. While the new law frees recreational boaters from having to get permits, it also orders the Environmental Protection Agency to study discharges from recreational boats and draw up regulations within three years that would limit them. The Coast Guard would enforce the new rules.
Ironically, enactment of the new legislation came just a week after a U.S. appeals court backed an earlier district court ruling that would have mandated permits. The ruling meant that recreational boaters would not get any relief in the courts, and helped spur action in Congress, where, as late as mid–June, the bill was still languishing in the Senate, with no sign of quick passage.
"Basically, what this means is that recreational boaters do not have to do anything about this, at least until EPA issues its new regulations, and even then they won't have to obtain a ballast–water permit," says Margaret Podlich, vice president for government affairs at BoatU.S., which played a key role in lobbying for passage of the bill.
INDUSTRY LOBBYING
The issue sparked a massive mobilization in the marine industry, where BoatU.S., the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) and other groups – as well as scores of individual boaters – pushed Congress to act.
"We had significant support from boaters, boating groups, industry representatives, marinas–all sectors of the boating world," Podlich says. "That's what made this work."
Thom Dammrich, president of the NMMA, wrote in his blog that the legislation prevented "an onerous and unnecessary regulatory regime on recreational boaters."
The prospect that recreational boaters might have to obtain permits arose in 2006, when a federal district court was considering a case aimed at cracking down on discharge from ocean–going cruise ships and cargo carriers. These ships routinely load and unload ballast water as they travel, and that water can transport marine life between different bodies of water. These so–called "invasive species" can lead to environmental problems.
The new law spared recreational boaters from having to get discharge permits, but directed the EPA to study discharges from pleasure boats and draft regulations within three years to limit them.
Environmental groups say more than 21 billion gallons of ballast water are released into U.S. waters each year. Court documents say more than 10,000 marine species are carried around the globe that way each day, among them the zebra mussel, a native of the Caspian Sea, which was brought into the Great Lakes in the late 1980s.
The invaders since have spread to the Mississippi, Hudson, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas and Colorado rivers, disrupting ecosystems and damaging harbors, power plants and water plants, whose intake gates suck the organisms into the facilities. The Coast Guard estimates the economic impact at about $5 billion a year.
REGULATIONS
As part of the crackdown, however, the court ordered EPA to expand the ballast–water permit system to cover all vessels, including recreational boats, which historically had been exempt.
