By Jessica Edwards

Efforts by the cruise industry to gain public support for an attempt to get water quality standards set in the 2006 cruise ship initiative lowered met with some success in Haines last week during an "environmental tour" of a large cruise ship.

Residents, business owners and local leaders were among 40 guests invited aboard the Holland America Line’s Volendam June 25.

The day began with a movie detailing environmental practices on board, including recycling, advanced waste water treatments systems, and hazardous waste disposal.

Broken into groups of 10, guests then embarked on a two-hour tour of the ship’s bowels – the galley, laundry rooms, engine rooms, water treatment equipment, and engineer’s room – finishing with a tour of the bridge and a gourmet lunch at the Pinnacle Grill.

John Binkley, president of the Alaska Cruise Association, an organization representing cruise lines including Holland America, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean, said the purpose of the tour was to show the industry had in recent years undergone a complete change in corporate culture when it came to the environment.

"The industry had violations in the past," Binkley said, "but that has changed now. The cruise industry has leapfrogged where many local communities are with waste stream treatment."

Captain Pieter Visser told the group the Holland America Line had invested $40 million in waste water treatment systems, and would continue to invest "if there is progress in technology."

That ships are operating with the best technology available to them is the crux of the industry’s problem with water quality standards set in the 2006 cruise ship initiative, Binkley said.

Even though wastewater discharged from the Volendam was cleaner than the effluent discharged from most municipalities, the ships cannot meet water quality standards in the initiative, he said.

Of particular difficulty for the ships was removing from wastewater discharges dissolved heavy metals such as copper, nickel and zinc to initiative standards.

Copper levels in the drinking water taken on board the ships in Ketchikan, for instance, exceeded 800 parts per billion. The initiative would require ships to remove copper in excess of 3 parts per billion. "There’s not the technology out there to pull out copper to that standard," Binkley said.

As a result, the Alaska Department of Conservation this March issued a two-year stay, giving cruise ships until 2010 to comply with the new standards for discharging in state waters. Binkley told guests aboard the Volendam the cruise industry plans to ask state legislators to ease the standards.

Otherwise, cruise companies have said ships would be forced to run to federal waters to discharge waste water, resulting in fewer Alaskan ports of call.

In an interview last week, initiative co-sponsor Gershon Cohen said this wasn’t the first time the industry has argued cleaner technologies weren’t available. He said standards in the initiative required the industry to help drive the technology forward for the greater benefit of cleaner state waters.

When industry watchdogs discovered in 2000 pollution levels in sewage discharge from the ships were "through the roof," cruise corporations said it wasn’t possible to get wastewater cleaner, Cohen said.

"Within a year, technologies were developed allowing them to be compliant," Cohen said, adding the money spent on the current public relations campaign would be better spent on finding solutions to compliance. "This isn’t like putting a man on the moon."

Cohen said fish were more sensitive to dissolved copper in water than humans, explaining why that metal was allowed in municipal drinking water in fairly high levels.

Research done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests dissolved copper negatively affects the ability of fish to school, orient to water flow, and avoid predation. A different NOAA study showed fish avoided static point-source discharge areas for copper, such as municipal sewage outlets.

Cohen said because ships discharged on the move, fish couldn’t avoid discharges.

Current wastewater systems on board ships did a good job of removing solids and bacteria, he said, but weren’t designed to remove dissolved pollutants such as biocides, oil, and pharmaceuticals.

Cohen said the Ocean Rangers program which mandates a third party environmental officer on board each ship, had been strenuously resisted.

Reports by the rangers would be crucial in determining if the cruise lines were indeed complying with state law, he said. "If they aren’t doing anything wrong, then why do they care if we are watching?" Cohen said. "It should be the best public relations they could have."

Residents and borough leaders took differing positions on the initiative’s wastewater discharge standards after Wednesday’s tours. Most said they were impressed with the environmental technology and management systems on board the Volendam.

Café owner Mary Jean Borcik said she found the tour enjoyable and informative. "When you asked a question, you got the same answer from everyone."

She said she questioned the veracity of a demonstration by the chief engineer, who took allegedly filtered and treated sewage and gray water from a spigot on a silver tank labeled "ultraviolet filter." No one offered to drink the water. "If it’s cleaner than drinking water, why didn’t anyone drink it?"

"They invested $40 million. I was impressed with how they implemented that and maintained it in all waters," said chamber of commerce secretary Joan Carlson about the fact the ships treated and discharged waste water cleaned to current Alaska standards on voyages elsewhere.

She said it seemed inconsistent to ask ships to remove copper from drinking water taken on in port, and said the state should look into cleaning municipal drinking water.

"If cruise ships have to release cleaner water with less parts per billion in copper than they take on board, maybe the levels in the initiative ought to be adjusted," said borough mayor Fred Shields.

"I disagree the levels set in the initiative are unreasonable," said resident and state House of Representatives candidate Tim June. "I hope the industry is willing to work to lessen their impacts rather than just change legislation."

Nevertheless, June said he saw a new commitment to the environment during the tour.