V.I. Legislature asks feds to delay cruise ship pollution measure

In a last-minute move to stall the territory's inclusion in regulations that would reduce air pollution from large ships plying the waters off American shores, the 29th Legislature on March 24 passed a resolution asking federal officials to lobby an international agency to postpone the final vote on the measure.

Senators who sponsored the resolution said they had been unaware of the proposal, and they contend that the local government needs time to assess the impact of the proposed regulations - which would require large ships to install pollution control technology or to burn cleaner fuel as they approach the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Some senators said they had just learned of the proposal at the Seatrade Cruise Shipping Miami convention in mid-March.

"Our greatest concern was that none of us knew anything about that," said Sen. Janette Millin Young, one of four V.I. senators who sponsored the resolution. "It was the first I heard about it."

In December 2010, The Daily News published a story on the proposed regulations, which would set up an "Emission Control Area" in waters around the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

And a year and a half earlier, in June 2009, the V.I. Department of Planning and Natural Resources sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency supporting the proposed regulations.

Being designated as an Emission Control Area "will be of significant interest to the people of the US Virgin Islands. The residents will benefit from a reduction of air emissions. In addition, this will also result in better health for marine life, terrestrial plants, and animals," states the letter, signed by Robert Mathes, who was DPNR commissioner at the time.

The U.S. Government is proposing that the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, adopt the regulations for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The agency already has adopted the regulations for the U.S. and Canada.

After doing studies and receiving Mathes' letter, along with another letter expressing support from the Puerto Rico government, the U.S. Government made the proposal last year, according to the EPA.

The proposed regulations would create emission control areas where discharges of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and particulate matter from big ships in waters off the coasts of both territories would be subject to the same controls as they will be in waters off Florida or California - or anywhere else in the States.

In September, a committee of the International Maritime Organization OK'd the proposed regulations for the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and they are scheduled to go before the full agency for a vote in July.

If passed, implementation of the regulations could begin as soon as January 2014.

The goal of the regulations, according to the EPA, is to protect public health and sensitive ecosystems in the territories.

In a statement about the proposed regulations that the EPA released in December, it said that exposure to air pollutants from large ships can cause respiratory illnesses, such as lung disease, asthma, and heart disease, and noted that the asthma death rate in Puerto Rico is 2.5 times higher than the rate in the continental U.S.

"The sulfur, soot and other harmful air pollutants from large ships reach from ports to inland communities," Judith Enck, EPA Regional Administrator, said in the prepared release. "The designation will result in cleaner air for residents of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and the millions of tourists who visit these beautiful islands."

The V.I. Senate resolution

The resolution V.I. senators put together contends that the proposed regulations are "likely to have a detrimental effect on cruise operations and commerce in general" in the territory and that "it is not clear that any U.S. Virgin Islands government was given adequate opportunity to study the benefits and the economic costs and other impacts to fully comment" on the proposal.

In the resolution, senators petition the President Obama, Congress and the Department of the Interior to urge the International Maritime Organization to postpone enacting the regulations until the local government "has had an opportunity to conduct an impact study." They also ask for the committee that has already OK'd the regulations to invite and consider comments, recommendations, and objections from the V.I. government.

Millin Young, Sen. Alicia Hansen, Sen. Sammuel Sanes, and Sen. Shawn-Michael Malone sponsored the resolution.

Millin Young, Sanes, and Malone said that they were concerned about the effects that the cost of implementing the regulations would ultimately have on the cost of consumer goods shipped into the territory. They said that they also are concerned that the regulations would make the Virgin Islands a less attractive stop for cruise ships, prompting them to avoid the territory in favor of less-regulated ports in the Caribbean.

They also raised questions about whether the local government was properly included in the process while the regulations were under consideration.

Hansen did not respond to Daily News messages.

Malone said, "My concerns are that, like they do all the time, they make decisions without input from the territorial government at the right level. It really should be the governor and the Senate advised officially. How can you set these kinds of guidelines without our involvement?"

Malone said he doesn't believe pollution from large ships is creating a problem in the territory now, and he questioned the need to set standards as high in the Caribbean as they are in the U.S.

Sanes said he first heard of the proposal when cruise industry representatives mentioned the cost of implementing it during a meeting with senators about the Senate proposal - which later passed - to charge cruise lines visiting the territory an additional $1 per-passenger fee. He learned more about it at Seatrade, he said.

"I understand and fully comprehend the need for cleaner fuel. But we also have to look at the economic impact it's going to have on our people," Sanes said. "We would just like to have some time to do an economic study and find out what other options or recourse we can implement to soften the economic blow that's going to happen once this is implemented."

Millin Young said she believes that, because the territory imports everything and relies heavily on tourism, the V.I. government needs more time to conduct its own study into the health impacts of current emissions and the economic impact of the regulations, so that the local government can weigh the different concerns and make a decision.

Economic Impact

The U.S. government has conducted its own studies and analysis, available through links on the EPA website at http://www.epa.gov/otaq/oceanvessels.htm.

The U.S. economic impact analysis indicates that the impact of the proposed regulations on shippers would be "modest" and "reasonable" and notes that by the time the regulations would go into effect for the U.S. Caribbean, cruise lines and shippers operating in U.S. coastal waters already would have to meet the standards.

Information from the EPA indicates that the price increase for implementing the proposed regulations in the U.S. Caribbean per cruise ship passenger would raise the price of a cruise by less than 1 percent. It would be similar to, or less per day than the new fee senators OK'd for cruise ship passengers visiting the territory.

The U.S. proposal provides these estimated price increases for implementing the regulations:

- 40 cents per passenger, per day for a large cruise ship that travels from the U.S. East Coast throughout the Caribbean.

- 60 cents per passenger, per day for a medium-size cruise ship that operates a route between the U.S. and Puerto Rico for a five-day cruise.

- $1.30 per passenger, per day on a small cruise ship that spends nearly one fourth of the time in an emissions control area during an eight-day cruise.

Information from the U.S. proposal also indicates that for shippers, implementing the regulations in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands would increase the cost of shipping a 20-foot container by anywhere from 33 cents to $1.35, depending on the size of the ship and the length of the route.

The local government's inclusion

Although senators contend that the local government was not allowed to participate as fully in the decision-making as it should have been, the EPA contends that "all stakeholders" were involved in the process, and points to Mathes' letter supporting the measure as evidence of the local government's input.

"Stakeholders were engaged throughout the process, which began as early as 2009," said Elias Rodriguez, EPA Region 2 spokesman.

The "only opposition" in the islands that Rodriguez said he'd heard about was "in some segments of the cruise ship industry, and I believe that those concerns were largely addressed by the economic analysis."

The Coast Guard had a public hearing in Washington in September on the proposals - including the Emission Control Area regulations - that ultimately went before the committee of the International Maritime Organization later that month, although it is unclear whether any local government officials were notified.

V.I. Delegate to Congress Donna Christensen said she was not aware of the proposed regulations.

"I think it does raise a lot of questions," she said. "The EPA suggests that the increased costs would be minimal, but we are looking forward to having someone like Tropical and the other companies to cost out what it will mean to them."

In an interview, Mathes said that his staff drafted the letter that he signed supporting the proposal, although he had not personally explored the proposal in detail before signing.

DPNR staff "was involved in making a determination that this was positive for the environment and the air quality in the Virgin Islands," and Mathes went with the staff's recommendation, he said.

"The staff were contacted by EPA," he said. "No formal notification was made to me as commissioner by anyone at a senior level."

Then, last year, when the committee of the International Maritime Agency was scheduled to consider the proposal, Mathes said he started researching it himself, gathering information from various agencies and state and territorial governments, because the territory was considering pulling back its support.

Ultimately, though, "we did not challenge it," he said.

Once he learned more about the regulation, Mathes said he thinks "it's a good one."

"At the end of the day, I felt it was a good thing," he said. "I think there was a bit of a problem in terms of a lack of communication by EPA on a formal basis. We weren't happy with the way it was handled. EPA obviously put us in a very awkward situation, and they treated us like second class citizens."

Although senators said they had heard some opposition to the regulations from shippers in the territory, messages from The Daily News to Crowley Shipping and Tropical Shipping went unanswered.

Michele Paige, president of the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association said in a phone interview that the association is doing a study "to see if we can recommend alternative measures to achieve the same results with EPA, without having to go to lower-sulfur fuel."

"By having Puerto Rico and the USVI included, it would give a competitive disadvantage to you, because the cost of that fuel is extremely high and it's hard to get. It sets you apart from all other destinations in the Caribbean," she said.

Rodriguez said that the EPA contends that the public health benefits "far outweigh the nominal costs."

"It's only fair that we would propose the same protections for the people of the Caribbean as we do for the people of North America," he said.

According to the EPA, the northern and southern boundaries of the proposed Emission Control Area would extend roughly 50 nautical miles and 40 nautical miles from the territorial sea baseline of Puerto Rico. The eastern edge of the proposed area would generally run north-south, but extend eastward through the area between the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands and also eastward through the area between Saint Croix and Anguilla and Saint Kitts. It does not extend into marine areas subject to the sovereignty, sovereign rights, or jurisdiction of any state other than the United States.

- Contact Joy Blackburn at 774-8772 ext. 455 or email jblackburn@dailynews.vi.

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