A higher incidence of illegal discharge of oil by commercial ships on European waters may be happening than publicly acknowledged, said a report
Up to 3,000 cases of bilge water, which is a mix of potentially toxic substances, are illegally dumped in the European waters every year to cut down on operational costs of treating it, a report by European non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports and nine European publications revealed.
Dumping oil wastewater into the ocean has been banned for decades. However, seafarers use different techniques to bypass pollution laws and dump oily wastewater in the ocean, endangering life underwater.
What is bilge water?
Bilge water is a noxious mixture of oil, detergents, water, liquids from the engine room and metals such as lead and arsenic. While the ship makes its journey, these get collected at the bottom of the vessel called the bilge. This is known a bilge water, which is then stored in tanks. A single merchant ship is capable of producing several tonnes of bilge water in a day.
As per international regulations, large ships need to treat the bilge water with an “oily water separator” before dumping it into the ocean. However, the process of treating the bilge water to remove pollutants is expensive. In a bid to cut costs, ships dump the pollutants without treating it directly into the ocean, posing a serious threat to marine life, The Guardian reported.
How much spill are we talking of?
With the help of satellite data from environmental group SkyTruth, hundreds of potential dumps across the globe had been identified in 2021. However, the number of oil spills may be higher as SkyTruth satellites cover less than one-fifth of the world’s oceans.
The report estimates the amount of oily water that makes its way into the ocean could be over 52.8 million gallons annually, nearly five times the amount spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.
Slow action
Despite the use of sophisticated technology in capturing spills, countries have been slow in taking action or prosecuting the perpetrators, leading to a culture of impunity, The Guardian reported.
In Europe, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) monitors oil spills in the ocean waters through its CleanSeaNet initiative. CleanSeaNet analyses satellite images and reports potential oil discharges from ships.
Once a potential spill is noticed, an alert is sent to the relevant EU country, which inspects the site immediately and feeds its findings to EMSA. However, annual CleanSeaNet data reveals that the feedback levels from the governments are low. While the agency recorded 7,672 detections of potential oil spills, it has received feedback for only a third. Of the total detections, only 208 were confirmed to be oil slicks.
According to a report by EMSA and European Environment Agency, if a country takes longer time to inspect the detection, the chances of it being reported as “nothing observed” become higher.
Another problem is that even if countries identify potential illegal dumping of bilge water, they are not bound to report the subsequent action taken by them.
“You can give governments all the best tools in the world but if there’s no public accountability and pressure for them to use those tools, problems will not get fixed,” John Amos, president of SkyTruth, told The Guardian.
Merchant ships can be penalised with hefty fines for illegal dumping of bilge water. In 2016, Carnival’s Princess Cruises was fined $40 million for dumping bilge along the British coast.
However, these fines are not high enough to deter the ships from spilling bilgewater.
Source: CNBCTV18