As U.S. federal deadlines for ballast water treatment draw nearer, an international conference, BWMTech North America, examined industry preparedness. The conference was broadly attended by ship owners and operators, ballast water management system developers, Independent Laboratories qualified to conduct U.S. Coast Guard type approval testing, regulators and ship classification societies. Much of the discussion revolved around critical timing issues associated with meeting the U.S. federal regulatory deadlines, and the credibility of ballast water management system (BWMS) foreign certification testing to date. Ballast water discharges, like marine sanitation discharges, are subject to dual requirements: ships must install BWMSs which have passed muster in up-front staged performance assessments as well as meet discharge standards in real-time during routine operations. At $1-2 million per installation, this regulatory arrangement means that ship-owners, like aquatic resource stakeholders, desperately need the up-front certification testing to be as realistic and predictive of actual performance as possible. NEMWI's Great Ships Initiative (GSI) has helped pioneer and demonstrate BWMS testing that is representative of real world challenge conditions, and scientifically robust. Allegra Cangelosi, NEMWI President and GSI Director, provided insights on behalf of GSI at the conference and at an associated workshop entitled "A Practical Guide to US Coast Guard Type Approval Testing: Expert guidance on type approval testing processes and time-scales."

For more information, contact Allegra Cangelosi, President of the Northeast-Midwest Institute.