Ballast Water Rules Need Amendment

ICS SaysIt Is in the Middle of a Final Flurry of Lobbying to Secure an Amendment to Ballast Water Treatment Rules Due to Be Discussed at This Week's Meeting of IMO,MEPC

TheIMO's Ballast Water Management Conventionrules are due to come into force during 2016 requiring water treatment systems to be fitted to ships, but ICS argues that outstanding problems with the rules mean early adopters could be disadvantaged.

"Shipping companies still lack confidence that the very expensive new equipment required [under new IMO rules] will be regarded as fully compliant by governments, even though it has been type-approved, unless serious implementation problems with the Convention are addressed," said ICS.

"The issues that governments need to address include the lack of robustness of the current IMO type-approval process for the expensive new treatment equipment, the criteria to be used for sampling ballast water during Port State Control inspections, and the need for 'grandfathering' of type-approved equipment already or about to be fitted," continued the industry body which indirectly represents 80 percent of the world's shipping tonnage.

Without the addition of grandfathering rules, said ICS, shippers who have implemented type-approved systems to date could lose millions of dollars of investment if standards are changed.

"On the basis of recent contact with governments, ICS believes that there is now greater understanding of the industry's concern that new equipment, which has been type-approved in accordance with agreed IMO standards, might subsequently be deemed to be non-compliant," exaplined ICS.

However, it contended that theGovernment of Canada's recent proposal to allow "minor exceedence" does not solve any problems and could exacerbate them.

Source: Ship&Bunker

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• Treatment
• Water Treatment & Control
• Policy