During the UK Chamber of Shipping and Fathom Maritime Intelligence’s joint Ballast Water Forum held yesterday in London, the issues surrounding the installation and operation of ballast water treatment systems (BWTS) onboard short sea ships was a hotly debated topic.
The logistical ability to successfully fit a BWTS to vessels that operate on short sea routes was a principal issue that was raised by participants of the Forum. According to David Balston, Chair of the Forum and Director of Policy and Director Safety & Environment at UK Chamber of Shipping, said that “short sea shipping is in a particularly difficult situation…something has got to be done in the small ship sector”, largely due to the size of ballast systems relative to the size of these types of ships that operate on shorter routes.
Additional power through generators and pipes, tend to take up the most space, with a general consensus from Forum participants that it is vital for manufacturers to work harder in the future to develop systems that are small enough to fit to small ships.
Also, not only are space constraints problematic but also the inability for the ships to retain the power required to run the generators is a real concern.
Furthermore, the issue of regulatory non-compliance was raised, with the outcome being that a more pragmatic approach is required, particularly in relation to Port State Control (PSC) and checks onboard ships.
There is still a lot of remaining uncertainty about what could happen to a ship owner if the ship is found to be non-compliant, either because a system has failed through no fault of the ship owner, or if because of the size of the ship they are logistically unable to fit a system.
Frank Stuer-Lauridsen, PhD Director, of consultants LITEHAUZ ApS, showed support for this issue, indicating that this is something which needs a lot of consideration and this is why the same risk area approach is useful for enabling ship owners with small ships to understand how they can work with the regulation.
In order to mitigate these issues, exceptions and exemptions are being worked on by the IMO with updates to come in the near future. Edwin Pang, Senior Naval Architect, Herbert Engineering Europe Ltd. gave advice to short sea ship owners in the room, suggesting that they speak to their flag State as soon as possible about the problems in order to see what could be done and to enable regulatory decision-makers to make the right decisions regarding the forthcoming regulations.
Markus Helavuori, Technical Officer, International Maritime Organization (IMO) also contributed to the discussion with the idea that port reception facilities may also be an option. Ballasting in port for example may work under a fee paying scheme. However, in the case of small ports without such facilities, this is not a viable option, indicating that ports may need to play a key role in ballast operations in the future.
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