Air pollution from cargo ships stirs growing concern
Emissions pour from visiting vessels, and restrictions are few
By LARRY LANGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

It's a familiar sight from the Seattle waterfront: a long steamship, framed by the shadow of the Olympic Mountains, laden with cargo from a long ocean voyage and anchored in Elliott Bay.

But the image also has a less obvious, troubling aspect. For every day it's in the harbor, the ship's smokestacks may be spewing as much nitrogen oxide into the city's air as 12,500 cars, as much as an oil refinery.

Some Puget Sound-area officials suspect that ships burning diesel, bunker oil and other fuels could be major air pollution sources. The pollution is likely to get worse as more and faster ships ply the harbor.

What's more, your car or your wood stove has to meet more air pollution requirements than most of the big cargo ships that are the mainstay of Elliott Bay. National efforts to make the ships cleaner have had little practical effect. International efforts have yet to gather enough support. And locally, those efforts have taken only small steps.

"Oceangoing ships are the sole remaining pointsource of pollution in the United States that is not regulated," said Seattle Port Commissioner Lawrence Molloy. "Coastwide, we have a problem. This leads me to believe that something's going to happen."

A 2003 British Columbia study said marine vessels have produced more than a million tons of pollutants in a year, more than half the total there. The Greater Vancouver Regional District, which put together the study, predicts the marine industry will produce a growing percentage of key pollutants in that region as ship traffic grows and auto pollution is reduced.

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency has estimated that large diesel-powered vessel engines plying the Sound produce 15 percent of sulfur oxides and 7 percent of small particulates that can lodge in the lungs and cause respiratory problems. It also estimated the engines will produce 25 percent of mobile-source emissions by 2020.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that those engines produce 4 percent of the nitrogen oxides produced in Seattle, Tacoma and Bellingham. That's nearly three times higher than the national average for percentage of nitrogen oxides produced by ships.

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency estimates vessels produced 31,898 tons of pollutants in 1999, not including greenhouse gases. In the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors a typical oceangoing ship produces as much nitrogen oxide in a day as an oil refinery.

"Two or 3 tons a day," said Sam Atwood of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Engineer John Newhook of the Vancouver regional district said forecasts call for marine air pollution to overtake that from cars and light trucks in six years. The Puget Sound agency hasn't made any predictions, but Director Dennis McLerran said the British Columbia forecasts are "reasonable approximations of what we'd see here, because we're so similar to western Canada."

McLerran thinks ships are "probably making a significant contribution" to air pollution, "especially in some localized areas" near port terminals, such as Seattle's Sodo and Delridge neighborhoods.Global trade is expected to double by 2020. Seattle port officials expect cruise-ship calls to increase 40 percent next year and predict an 8 percent growth in container trade.

"We're getting more ships, and we're getting faster ships, and we're getting faster ships that are producing more pollution," said Teri Shore, clean vessel campaign director for Bluewater Network, a San Francisco-based environmental group that tracks marine issues.

Still, officials at the Port of Seattle have yet to be convinced that big ships contribute much to local air pollution. Wayne Grotheer, the port's environmental services director, said the region needs a detailed study of ship pollution.

The port is trying to organize a consortium of interests -- ports, ship operators and others -- to undertake the study. In April, industry and port officials, regulators and other experts plan to meet at Southcenter to discuss the issues and possible solutions.

Given the port's desire to increase cargo shipping, "it was not prudent just to ... sit back and wait and wonder, but better to be pro-active" if pollution controls are needed, Grotheer said.

Some steps are being taken in other ports to reduce the contamination. Ships sailing into Los Angeles are asked to slow to about 14 mph within 20 miles of the city's harbor, a move that has cut nitrogen oxide pollution from ships there by 1 ton a day, said James Corbett a maritime professor at the University of Delaware.

Some vessels also have been retrofitted to reduce pollution, though such changes are not widespread, Corbett said. Ships, unlike autos, aren't mass-produced, and there's much variation between them.

"There isn't (pollution reduction) stuff that's off the shelf," he said.

New vessels have cleaner-burning engines, but it takes some time to replace older boats in the fleet. So cleaner engines in new ships would not show the quick reductions in air pollution that introductions of, say, cleaner cars would.

The EPA has begun regulating emissions from American ships, though its rules don't cover foreign-flagged vessels that make up more than 90 percent of the ships calling on Puget Sound ports.

The industry says it is working to reduce emissions, though that is taking time. A pollution-reduction agreement, enacted in 1973, is being updated to cover air pollution. Among other things the agreement would put emission limits on engines in ships built since 2000.

"Since shipping is an international industry (it) is better regulated by international instruments," said Peter Hinchliffe, general marine manager of the International Chamber of Shipping, a London-based group that represents most merchant ship operators worldwide.

The new agreements covering air pollution, however, are not in effect. Officials of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, expect approval next year but need the votes of three more nations to put the new regulations into effect. Individual nations and ports would enforce the rules.

The maritime industry opposed the EPA's attempts to set limits on air pollution from large ships, arguing that current information didn't support the move. EPA spokesman John Millett said his agency expects ship emissions to get cleaner "over time," and says the EPA may enact more stringent rules in three years after reviews required by the Clean Air Act.

But industry representatives question the data that might be used to justify such rules and whether they are needed.

Hinchliffe said port-area emission figures are generally derived by applying air-emission factors to ship movements, by type of ship, a technique he said, that may not reflect a ship's movements in a harbor.

John Hansen, president of the North West CruiseShip Association, said the Vancouver district's prediction about marine pollution is wrong regarding cruise ships, because their engines are cleaner than other ships and the numbers of their port calls will probably level off.

Locally, officials are considering new strategies.

On Puget Sound, McLerran's agency is pressing the Port of Seattle to provide shoreside electric-power facilities, to allow docked ships to run equipment without keeping their own engines running.

Washington State Ferries has tested low-sulfur diesel fuel in one vessel and found it pollutes less; it must now decide whether to continue using the fuel, which is costlier than normal grades.

Air regulators also are trying to persuade the port to require cruise lines to burn low-sulfur fuel, something promised before the port developed a cruise-ship dock at Terminal 30 on the Seattle waterfront. Ship operators didn't use the fuel, saying it presented safety problems and engines didn't run as well on it.

Grotheer, at the port, said shoreside power hookups could be a costly measure that few ships are equipped to use, and it's not clear the power grid could handle it.

To offset some pollution, the port has built truck overpasses to container yards to speed truck traffic and has moved container-transfer facilities closer together. The port said marine diesel fuel sold here is lower in sulfur than the internationally recognized limit, suggesting ships may be polluting less than elsewhere.

But officials think a coastwide agreement may be needed to make vessel air-pollution rules work. Imposing restrictions unique to Puget Sound, for example, could put its ports at a competitive disadvantage.

"You're just pushing a ship somewhere else," Grotheer said.

P-I reporter Larry Lange can be reached at 206-448-8313 or larrylange@seattlepi.com