In order to clear the air on land, California is forcing oceangoing
vessels at least 24 miles off its coast to burn much cleaner fuels. The
landmark rule took effect July 1, but not without a fight. And now the
shipping industry is trying to get the courts to let them go back to
using the cheaper, dirtier bunker fuel.
“It’s sludge!” said Melissa Lin Perrella, a staff attorney with the
Natural Resources Defense Council, which helped defend the new rule in
court this year. Perrella noted that bunker fuel, a type of diesel with
a very high sulfur content, can be as much as 3,000 times dirtier than
the diesel fuel used by semitrucks. “The public health benefits of
these rules are huge,” she said. “Over the course of just the next six
years, over 3,500 premature deaths will be avoided in the state of
California.”
Forcing ships to use cleaner fuel will be phased in over the next
three years, but significant emission reductions will be immediate.
According to the California Air Resources Board, thirteen tons per day
of toxic particulate matter now emitted from the diesel engines of
oceangoing ships will be eliminated by the rule. Diesel exhaust
contains a variety of harmful gases and more than forty other known
cancer-causing substances. Currently, the California Air Resources
Board says that diesel particulate-matter emissions from oceangoing
vessels put more than seven million people in California at higher
cancer risk when they are exposed over their lifetime.
The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, a shipping industry
group, tried in April to block the rule from taking effect. The
association argued in federal court that the state didn’t have the
authority to reach eighteen miles beyond its territory to regulate what
fuels could be burned in ships’ engines. But the South Coast Air
Quality Management District, which serves portions of Los Angeles,
Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, filed a brief in the
case stating that it would not be able to meet its federally mandated
air quality standards without the rule, because ship emissions are such
a significant portion of California’s air pollution. The district court
denied the shipping association’s motion, but the group is now working
to try to have an appeal heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals.
A spokesperson for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association could
not be reached to explain their opposition to the rule. But according
to the California Air Resources Board, the cleaner fuel will add an
extra $30,000 to the cost of a California port visit — roughly 1
percent of the typical fuel costs for a vessel crossing the Pacific
Ocean. And there are technical concerns as well. According to Nathan
Menefee, author of TheMaritimeBlog.com, the requirement
to switch from heavy bunker fuel to lighter cleaner fuel mid-voyage is
wreaking havoc in the engine rooms of the ships that are affected.
Menefee, who is a Lieutenant with the US Coast Guard, added that the
implementation of the rule “has resulted in several instances of ships
losing propulsion while entering or exiting California ports, creating
a dangerous situation and risk of a large-scale oil spill in coastal
waters.”
Meanwhile, in West Oakland, the neighborhood closest to Oakland’s
port, the health impacts from diesel particulate matter are
considerable, as are the various sources of the pollution. The freeway,
the rail yard, and the port all contribute. But according to an Air
Resources Board study of the problem in 2008, about 13 percent of the
diesel particulate matter in West Oakland comes directly from ships at
berth and in transit.
Bay Area Air Quality Management District employees say they are
already working to enforce the landmark rule by boarding ships in the
Port of Oakland and conducting onboard inspections of fuels. Their goal
is to repeat inspections at least once a month.
Spokespersons for the California Air Resources Board say the same
thing is happening up and down the coast. Inspectors are boarding ships
and checking the required fuel logs to make sure the vessels have
switched over from bunker fuel to the lighter, cleaner, low-sulfur
fuel. After the logs are checked, inspectors review the ship’s receipts
to make sure that the cleaner fuel was purchased. Then they visit the
engine room and sample the fuel from the low-sulfur fuel tank. Samples
are sent to a lab where they’re analyzed for sulfur content. So far,
the Air Board says no violations of the rule have been issued. The
severity of the fine will depend on a variety of factors, according to
the air board, including whether the violation was accidental or how
heavy the illegally burned fuel mixture was.
The California Air Resources Board estimates that reducing ship
exhaust under the new rule will eliminate an estimated 3,600 premature
deaths between 2009 and 2015 and lower cancer rick in coastal
neighborhoods by more than 80 percent. In 2012, when the
very-low-sulfur fuel requirement will be totally phased in, reductions
of diesel particulate matter will be fifteen tons daily, which is 83
percent less than what existed before the rule was passed.
