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Part 4: Affects of Enforcement/Compliance on
Emerging BWTS Markets
The sizable global market for ballast water treatment technologies described in the previous
section demonstrates the large opportunity for ballast treatment technology vendors. These
vendors will be competing with each other to claim a share in this new global market. However,
they will also be competing against another factor: ship owners and operators who choose not to
comply with regulations, or who delay compliance. In this regulation-driven market, we
highlight some significant enforcement issues that regulators in IMO member nations and
suppliers of BWTS will face as the ballast water convention comes into force between now and
2016.
There are a number of long-term questions with regard to liability once a BWTS is installed and
is operational and pumping water. All of these technologies are in their relative infancy, so the
question remains, what if it turns out an approved system doesn’t work over time? At least two
systems have been running on ships since 2006 or earlier. However, should one of these systems
or one used on another ship be found not to be operating properly, will a port regulator’s
response be to prohibit a ship from discharging ballast? Our interviews indicate that, within the
industry, there is little if any questioning of the “magic box” approach to monitoring compliance
—if the equipment is turned on and functioning, it should be sufficient evidence that the ship
meets regulatory requirements. At this time there is little regulation developed to establish the
long-term reliability of systems or methodologies for determining the continued effectiveness of
a system. In time, this will likely change and a metric will have to be developed to verify the
continued function of an installed system.
In this sense, there is an analogy to the experience with implementation of oil/water-separator
regulations in the 1980s. Experience showed that the separators were initially unreliable, but as
long as a device passed a standard test, it was considered acceptable. Both technology and
enforcement regimes for oil/water separators have evolved since that time, and now there are
requirements for more stringent testing as well as requirements for off-site calibration of the oil
content sensing equipment. These changes and improvements of the technologies, as well as
more meaningful penalties for non-compliance have caused numerous older vessels to be
retrofitted with newer oil/water separators even though their existing older units were still
functional and may have been considered acceptable under older regulations.
For each of the technologies other than ultraviolet filters, there appears to be a straightforward
way to measure effectiveness, such as water temperature or the percentage of chemical in the
water. But for UV filters, it is difficult to determine when a filter is not working or has not been
working. Is there a method to analyze when a new filter is needed without having to test the BW
discharge water? Most importantly, how can a ship owner/operator prove compliance with the
IMO guidelines to regulatory inspectors and flag-state officials during routine inspections?
The USCG proposed rulemaking notes that for its proposed (stricter) Phase Two standards, there
is not currently a testing protocol capable of establishing that a given technology consistently
meets the standard. Because of this uncertainty, USCG has proposed a practicability review to