SB 29-CRUISE SHIP WASTEWATER DISCHARGE PERMITS  5:01:27 PM CHAIR GIESSEL reconvened the Senate Resource Committee meeting at 5:01 p.m. and announced SB 29 to be up for consideration. LARRY HARTIG, Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), introduced staff in the audience. He planned to give a little history leading up to today, talk about the Science Advisory Panel and then about the bill and permitting facilities. While this bill deals with some aspects of that, it primarily aligns cruise ships with other people who get discharge permits from the department. It doesn't change the laws on how it's done. COMMISSIONER HARTIG recalled in 1999 when people became concerned about the waste water discharge from cruise ship vessels and that led to them being required to switch to advance waste water treatment systems in 2004. They were known to be the best water treatment at the time doing even better than land- based facilities. In 2006, a citizens' initiative was put forth taxing the industry to help pay for onshore infrastructure and requiring a permit issued by the State of Alaska in order to discharge treated waste water in Alaska's waters (no more than three miles off shore, which is federal waters that has no such requirement). SENATOR FRENCH said Southeast Alaska has some enormously wide passages much more than six miles across and asked if strips of federal waters were located in those passages or do you have to go to the outer coast of Alaska to find federal waters. COMMISSIONER HARTIG said the department has maps dealing with those issues, but it is complicated. He needed a particular location to give him an answer, but in general, some rules apply and you don't just go to the outer beach. SENATOR FRENCH asked where the nearest federal water to Juneau is. COMMISSIONER HARTIG said he would have to get back to him on that. 5:06:29 PM He said the 2006 voters' initiative created the requirement for a state permit in state waters; it required that a vessel discharging water under that permit meet state water quality standards at the point of discharge. He explained that water quality standards originate in the federal Clean Water Act. Each state is supposed to identify what uses its waters can be used for such as drinking, recreation and acquatic life. Then those uses are looked at to see what water quality has to be: how much and what kind of pollutants can be allowed without impairing that use. So, the state set water quality standards to protect these designated uses of water bodies throughout the state. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviews those standards and approves them; then they get incorporated into permits. COMMISSIONER HARTIG explained if someone needs a permit from the state to discharge water, the department would look at the uses of the waters they would be discharging into and what impacts it would have on those waters and write limits into the permit. Those permit conditions set water quality standards. So, "at the point of discharge" means those standards have to be met before their discharge hits the water. That is in contrast to other dischargers of treated waste water around the state. Other industries' water treatment plants that discharge into marine water have mixing zones, which are an exception to water quality standards. They are allowed by the EPA recognizing that it's really difficult, if not impossible, for many dischargers to meet the water quality standards at the point of discharge. So they allow a limited area of mixing of the treated effluent with the receiving water where the water quality standards have to be met at the edge of the mixing zone. The permit would say what the conditions for the mixing zone are, how much could be discharged and where water quality standards have to be met and how they would be monitored. Mixing zones are a typical provision in a state permit that would be issued to a waste water discharge facility anywhere around the state, and the 2006 initiative didn't allow DEC to give cruise ships mixing zones. The question arose from vessels that weren't meeting state water quality standards at point of discharge. In 2009 HB 134 passed that gave DEC temporary (until the end of 2015) authority to allow cruise ships to have mixing zones. So in 2016, they would go back to the original citizens' initiative using the point of discharge for criteria. Second, HB 134 required DEC to convene a Science Advisory Panel to advise them about what is on the horizon in terms of waste water treatment facilities. The statute designates where the panel members come from and what kind of expertise they must have. 5:12:46 PM The panel held about 15 meetings including experts from Europe and Alaska, DEC data and cruise ship system observations and issued a preliminary report in November 2012 indicating what was achievable and when. They concluded that the current systems called "advanced waste water treatment systems" are state-of- the-art in terms of what is available now. COMMISSIONER HARTIG explained that advanced waste water treatment systems are a class and that a number of manufacturers approach waste water treatment a little differently. Some may work better on different pollutants and ships are different in terms of piping and spacing, so you can't say one system is the best without studying the whole ship. 5:14:21 PM The panel also looked at DEC water quality data and found that these ships were doing pretty well with meeting the criteria at the point of discharge except for treating ammonia and three dissolved metals: zinc, copper and nickel. The panel couldn't identify a system on the horizon that could be installed on these vessels that would bring them into compliance with the point of discharge requirement. They did recognize that there certainly are opportunities for efficiencies and tweaking systems for improvements. With the standard hanging out there and the authority to do mixing zones sunseting in 2015, the department would suddenly be back to using at the point of discharge for all parameters. Maybe some affordable incremental moves could be made, but you still wouldn't make that standard by 2015. Would you tweak your system and try to stay in Alaska or start making plans to leave? The DEC has a number of ways to regulate dischargers; it isn't just the treatment system. It can say where the discharge should be, how often, when under way so you have the sea turning up behind the ship and rapid mixing, and who goes when to name a few. Other things can be done to minimize the impact of the discharge besides just looking at the treatment system, itself, Commissioner Hartig said. The panel also looked at the environmental benefit with other changes that might be made and found that it would probably be hard to define that, particularly given DEC's other authorities to minimize the impacts of discharging waste water. The preliminary report was required in 2013 and a final one is due in January 2015 - right before the sunset of DEC's mixing zone authority with the idea that the legislature would come back and revisit the situation and decide what to do. The DEC concurred with the Science Advisory Panel's findings. 5:18:48 PM The key points in SB 29 are: -it removes at the point of discharge requirement. -it would allow cruise ships to be able to get a mixing zone permit only if they treat waste water in advance with an advanced waste water treatment system. -it gives DEC guidance on what an advanced waste water treatment system is and the ability to approve of a system that does the same thing in a different way. One thing the panel didn't address is in SB 29 and that is smaller vessels; less than 20 that operate in Alaskan waters. Their discharges would be managed under "best management plans" that would be submitted to and approved by DEC. The department would still have the ability to require a permit if they thought the vessel needed to do things differently. The plans can be in effect for five years under SB 29 instead of the existing three, which is consistent with all waste water permits. The five years would also apply to the larger vessels. 5:22:22 PM CHAIR GIESSEL asked if the small vessel section was section 2 on page 2. COMMISSIONER HARTIG said he wasn't going to do a sectional analysis but give an overview of how things worked together. He went on to say that SB 29 also puts cruise ships in the same category as other facilities that DEC issues waste water permits for. Current law says when the department writes a new permit for cruise ship vessels it can't have any condition in it that is less restrictive than was in an earlier version of the permit (the "anti-backsliding provision," that is based on federal law). But there are a series of exceptions for when you are allowed to backslide. Those exceptions are in current cruise ship law and they are needed sometimes; for instance if a ship did well on a bunch of parameters but not so well on one. The department now has the flexibility to let them go ahead, so they still want that flexibility. 5:24:56 PM He said they had been writing permits during the last few years the initiative was in effect and maybe some of them aren't right. They basically want to have something similar to what they do for other dischargers. SENATOR FRENCH asked him to explain how the effects of copper and zinc could be of concern to people who fish for salmon. COMMISSIONER HARTIG said all the parameters they talk about are of concern which is why water quality criteria has been established for them. Copper has the potential to impact olfactory senses of fish and impair their ability to find their home stream or change their response to prey. He explained that the department is required to review its standards at least every three years; it's called a tri-annual review. They notice the public and list the things they think need to be looked at for possible change. Copper has been on the last couple of tri-annual reviews; so it's one they are watching. The best advice he could give is that the science is still emerging and moving on it now would be premature. When they move it will be very informed, because copper is not unique to cruise ships. It would be of concern for a mine discharge and it's also what some water systems are built out of. SENATOR FRENCH asked if all cruise ships have copper pipes. COMMISSIONER HARTIG answered no. Copper has a variety of sources; you could say copper came from the copper pipes in the community where they got their bunkered water or from the copper pipes or fittings in the ship. DEC sets water quality standards for everybody, so when they look at the potential effects of copper, it wouldn't matter where it came from. They would look at the amount of copper that is discharged and if it would be safe going into whatever the receiving environment is. They couldn't require discharging under way for a shore based facility. Copper can't be treated in the discharge, but other approaches can be taken like looking at people putting in more copper than the cruise ships do. SENATOR FRENCH asked who that would be. COMMISSIONER HARTIG replied that he would have to look at the historic mining reports. The City and Borough of Juneau plant had problems with copper at one point that EPA was doing some enforcement on. 5:30:08 PM SENATOR MICCICHE said he was aware of mixing zones being disallowed in anadromus streams for waste water discharges and asked if there was another scenario in the marine environment where mixing zones are disallowed in the state. COMMISSIONER HARTIG answered that SB 29 doesn't change the law that would allow DEC to decide where, when and how someone could discharge waste water from a cruise ship. So they could prohibit it that way. Mixing zone regulations don't go away with SB 29 and there are 17 requirements to get one; it can't bio- accumulate or have toxic effects, it can't affect anadromus fish going through the area, and it can't affect the water body's ability to produce aquatic life in the future or affect populations to name a few. A cruise ship has a right to mixing zone, but it doesn't mean they automatically get one; it must have an advanced waste water treatment system as well as meeting all the conditions. COMMISSIONER HARTIG said SB 29 doesn't change water quality standards and when the state changes them they can't be used unless the EPA approves them. SB 29 would sunset the Science Advisory Panel, but not change DEC's ability to impose permit conditions or to look at best available technologies, putting it in line with other dischargers. CHAIR GIESSEL asked if the allowance for cruise ships expires in 2015. COMMISSIONER HARTIG answered that it expires at the end of calendar year 2015 and the DEC would lose its authority to allow mixing zone for cruise ships and would go back to "at the point of discharge" for all water quality standards. CHAIR GIESSEL asked why it was important to address the bill now. COMMISSIONER HARTIG replied that two things would motivate an earlier look. First, the cruise ships themselves have various systems and they are pretty packed in their spaces. If you make a big change, the ship would have to be pulled apart; it would have to go into dry dock and be cut in half or something like that and that would require a fair amount of lead time and the cruise ships are scheduled around the world. Also, nothing has been identified to be any better than existing advanced waste water treatment systems in terms of being available soon. 5:37:13 PM Another point was that the current permit that was used for the last cruise season expires in April 2013 and can't be extended (beyond the three years). The first cruise ship arrives in April 2013. a week or two after the permit expires, and it will need a permit to be legal under Alaska law because it needs to discharge. DEC could issue a new permit for vessels coming to Alaska that want to discharge before this upcoming season, but it would be based on existing law. So if SB 29 passes there would be a permit issued for the coming season that would be based on the previous law. Ships would have to plan their cruise season around that. It's all doable, but if SB 29 passes, then the department would turn around and start running another permit through the public process. SENATOR FAIRCLOUGH asked how the department defines "advanced waste water treatment" in regulation. COMMISSIONER HARTIG replied that it would look like the statute; the only difference would be if some other treatment system became available. 5:41:00 PM SENATOR FAIRCLOUGH said she didn't see a definition in the bill. Language on page 3, starting on line 13, provides two areas of minimum standards and she asked if those were federal water quality standards or approved Alaska water quality standards that have been approved by the EPA or another federal agency. COMMISSIONER HARTIG replied that those are the federal standards, sometimes referred to as the Murkowski Law, that caused the ships to put advanced waste water treatment systems in. SENATOR FAIRCLOUGH said she was looking for specific Alaska water quality standards and needed a better definition of "advanced waste water treatment." She also wanted to know what the department might consider as add-ons. COMMISSIONER HARTIG said the water quality standards are in regulation 18 AAC 70. Manuals are incorporated by reference and are all available on the DEC website; he offered to help her locate what she was looking for. SENATOR DYSON said putting the existing standards in place was hard to do and ships spent a lot of money to install those plants that were only required for the Alaskan market. He said that Anchorage's municipal waste water treatment is still only a primary system and is pretty primitive and the only way they stay in business is by being grandfathered in. He was sure Anchorage must have 70,000 houses with copper pipe and he had some information that said the Mendenhall River produces 23 times the amount of copper of all the cruise ships combined and asked if that was true. COMMISSIONER HARTIG responded that he read that in the panel's report, but he didn't know the exact figures. SENATOR DYSON asked if he knew how much copper was in the Copper River that has a world-class salmon run. 5:45:18 PM SENATOR BISHOP asked how many permits he writes for large vessels. COMMISSIONER HARTIG replied that he writes one permit; it's called a general permit and different types of vessels are separated into subcategories within it. SENATOR BISHOP asked for ball park information on the ratio of people who discharge inside and outside state waters. 5:46:41 PM MICHELLE BONNET HALE, Director, Division of Water, Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Anchorage, AK, said that 40 percent of cruise ships go outside the three mile limit to discharge. COMMISSIONER HARTIG pointed out that may just be because of the holding capacity they have in their itinerary and how much time in port and between ports. It's difficult to reach a conclusion on one fact. SENATOR FAIRCLOUGH asked if the ferry system was excluded from the permit requirement. MS. HALE answered that ferries are small passenger vessels that submit a best management practices plan. COMMISSIONER HARTIG answered that most of those vessels are regulated by the Coast Guard in terms of what kinds of systems they have, which is a lower technology than an advanced waste water treatment system. SENATOR FAIRCLOUGH asked if he had recommendations for improving ferry waste water discharge standards. COMMISSIONER HARTIG replied that he hadn't looked at that. [SB 29 was held in committee.]