Policies meant to limit air pollution allow toxic dumping in Salish Sea

Washington state is facing a conundrum on the open water. A tool to reduce air pollution from ships can result in water pollution. And a proposal to untangle that paradox ran aground this winter in the Washington Legislature for the second year in a row.

Semi-retired KUOW reporter Tom Banse wrote about the issue recently for the Salish Current. He talked to KUOW’s Paige Browning about his reporting.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Paige Browning: The issue involves something called exhaust scrubbers, used to basically power wash the smokestacks and exhaust on big ships, so they put out less nasty air pollution. But you report this is backfiring. Can you explain what's going on?

Tom Banse: That's right. It is kind of a conundrum. Ships basically, under international maritime rules, have two options for how to reduce their air pollution. One is just to switch to a premium, more expensive, but cleaner-burning fuel. The other is to use the scrubbers. The problem with the scrubbers is you get this acidic, toxic wastewater that has to go somewhere and commonly it's just flushed overboard.

What the Legislature, at the prodding of the environmental community locally, is thinking of doing is just take away the scrubber option, make everyone use the cleaner-burning, but more expensive premium fuel.

Why has this failed so far?

It didn't even get out of port, if you will, at the Legislature. It didn't come to a vote. There was support, but there were two big problems. One is the port association and shippers in our state are not convinced yet that taking away the scrubber option for air compliance is a good idea, and they were vigorously opposed.

Secondly, the state would then need to set up a new regulatory division in the State Department of Ecology. That would be a multimillion-dollar cost, and the state's budget writers who are not on board as sponsors, put down their foot at the beginning of the session. There's a deficit in the budget and they just would not consider anything that increased state spending on a new program. So, it was a non-starter.

Tell us more about what port representatives and the shipping industry are saying.

They were concerned that the state would make its ports less competitive for minimal benefit. The issue, particularly from the shipping industry, is they are unconvinced that these wastewater discharges of the scrubber leftovers are really causing that much harm.

Now, the environmental community says they have lots of studies, particularly lab studies, that show this stuff is harmful to the environment. There was one study though, in Washington state on cruise lines, where the researchers took water out of the scrubber discharge, and after figuring out how much dilution happens, which is quite a lot quite quickly in the big water like Puget Sound, that the harm was, “minimal to the environment.” That caused people to pause about increasing the costs on the shipping industry for what was perceived to be potentially a minimal benefit to the environment.

And was that study scientifically reviewed?

Very good point. So, this was the draft study that the Legislature had to look at. The environmental community has issues, as does the State Department of Ecology, with the methodology of the researchers, and they've asked them to go back and rework their results. That is now starting peer review, and we probably won't have a final paper until at least half a year from now.

What do environmental and salmon conservation groups want to happen?

Well, they are undeterred by the setbacks at the state Legislature because they perceive a greater momentum. And this is an issue really worldwide. Alaska’s Legislature is dealing with it right now as well. The ships that leave Seattle go through British Columbia, go to Alaska, to Asia. Some countries in Asia don't allow this either.

So, the immediate thing in our region is for the state Legislature to convene all the participants over the summer — environmentalists, ports, shipping lines — and see if they can rework the legislation, yet again, and lower its compliance costs to make it past the budget masters to have something in the 2027 legislative session.

As you've reported, our neighbors in California, Oregon, Alaska, and Canada, all have a stake in this issue. How is Canada approaching it so far?

What gets dumped in the water in Canada doesn't stay in Canada, and vice versa, so this is definitely a transboundary issue. The same lineup of interests — so ports, environmentalists, shipping lines — are also squaring off in British Columbia. The one difference is that there's not really a role for the province as there is for the state on our side of the border. It's all Transport Canada's bailiwick.

They announced a year ago that they would ban scrubber wastewater discharge in the Southern Resident killer whale habitat, which is, conveniently for us on this side of the border, almost all the water on the Canadian side of the line that we share in the Salish Sea.

But, there is no implementation timeline at this point. So, more consultation is happening across the border, as will be happening this summer here. At some point, probably, this will be resolved with the same answer. But I'm not holding my breath.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.