E. coli, Fecal Matter, and Cruise Ships
There’s an eye-opening (and stomach-turning) report posted online right now at the website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It’s called the Draft Cruise Ship Discharge Assessment Report. The EPA created it after receiving petitions from dozens of environmental agencies seeking to stop cruise ships from turning open waters into open sewers.
I scrolled through all 124 pages this morning, and some of the statistics from the EPA’s sampling efforts are downright disgusting.
In the case of fecal and solid matter being discharged overboard, only 1 out of 70 samples taken met the EPA’s standards for health and safety. There is a special note that these discharges also consistently exceeded standards in shellfish harvesting waters. That’s our food supply being treated like a toilet.
Another disturbing excerpt from the report: Except in Alaska–which has an active local resistance to cruise ship pollution–the untreated graywater being dumped into the ocean by cruise ships contained E. coli and fecal coliform in every single sample taken by the EPA. The fecal coliform concentrations were one to three orders of magnitude greater than those found in untreated domestic wastewater.
I share this information with you for two reasons. First, because there is still time for the public to comment on this EPA report (in my opinion, we should all show support for stopping these disturbing practices at sea). You can e-mail your thoughts straight to the EPA at OW-Docket@epa.gov.
The second reason I am sharing this information is that, as always, I am a firm believer in the fact that when compared with cruise ships, yacht charter offers a far superior vacation experience. That’s true not just in terms of the enjoyment you’ll find, but also in the respect you will show for the environment.
Do you really want to contribute to the mass pollution these ships are generating? Or would you rather take your kids sailing on a private boat instead? Even the largest motoryachts available for charter don’t come close to generating these kinds of disturbing statistics.
We’re working on a special report here on CharterWave that compares the environmental impact of cruise ships when compared with charter yachts. We’ll be sure to incorporate this new EPA data, and I’ll let you know here on the Editor’s Blog just as soon as our own report is posted online.