Joan M. Bondareff and Jeanne M. Grasso
The eight-part series, Blue Planet II, narrated by Sir David Attenborough last year on BBC, seems to have awoken the public’s attention to the crisis of our oceans being littered with vast amounts of plastic, fishing gear, and other types of marine debris. As a result, cities, states, and nations around the world, as well as major cruise lines, are proactively looking at ways to reduce plastic to keep it from entering the sea.
The Extent of the Problem
Most plastic or marine debris comes from land-based sources, including from rivers that enter the sea, especially from countries with less responsible garbage practices. For example, according to the BBC, most garbage in the ocean comes from 15 nations around the Pacific Rim, including China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Thailand.
According to a study published in Nature magazine and also reported in USA Today in March 2018, the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a collection of floating plastic trash halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles—an area twice the size of Texas. The trash is said to come from the Pacific Rim as well as North and South America. Since the garbage patch is in international waters, no nation has stepped up to clean it up. (Id.) Continue reading “The Ocean Is Awash with Plastic: How Can the Maritime Industry Help?”
Environmental laws and regulations in the United States impose substantial recordkeeping and reporting obligations on regulated industries. These requirements are designed to document a company’s compliance with the requirements and limitations established by the regulatory scheme as well as any applicable environmental permits. Regulated companies also are required to maintain their compliance documentation and to submit periodic comprehensive reports to regulators detailing their compliance with environmental standards. These records are used by the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and the delegated state regulatory agencies to monitor compliance and, if permit exceedances or irregularities in the compliance records are detected, to evaluate the need for enforcement actions.
Action Item: Although the ratification of the IMO’s Ballast Water Convention will not alter U.S. compliance obligations, industry stakeholders must now consider their obligations under international law to ensure compliance with both regimes. Until the U.S. Coast Guard type-approves a ballast water management system (“BWMS”), owners and operators of both U.S. and foreign-flag vessels trading in U.S. waters should take steps to evaluate the compliance obligations under both regimes before making capital investments in BWMSs that may not comply with U.S. law. 
On February 16, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a landmark decision with respect to responder immunity. In In re DWH Oil Spill, MDL No. 2179 (ED La, February 16, 2016), the court granted the clean-up responder defendants’ motions for summary judgment with respect to claims asserted against them by plaintiffs who engaged in a variety of clean-up activities and were exposed to oil, dispersants, and other chemicals while doing so as a result of actions or omissions relating to the defendants’ use of dispersants and other response efforts during the Deepwater Horizon incident. 
The challenges faced by the maritime industry in implementing international and domestic ballast water requirements continue unabated. These challenges may be getting even more challenging in the next year or so.