In some of these cases, there were multiple incidents when the discharges occurred, and according to the U.S. Department of Justice, some of these multiple incidents numbered in the hundreds. Of these, eighty-seven cases were handled in the United States; the rest were referred to the country whose flag the ships flew.
Environmental laws and regulations have not kept pace with the enormous rate of growth of the cruise industry. One set of regulating guidelines is called MARPOL (International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships), a set of standards for all ships to follow regarding the discharge of certain substances and for the building and maintenance of ships and their equipment. Another law governing cruise ship operations is the Clean Water Act, which prohibits the dumping of any pollutant within three nautical miles of the United States and prohibits the discharge of oil and other hazardous substances within twelve nautical miles. The second of two multimillion-dollar criminal fines against Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines originated from direct violations of the Clean Water Act. Another of the U.S. laws instrumental in governing cruise ships is the Federal Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, which incorporates many of the MARPOL provisions. In 2002, Carnival Cruise Lines was found to be in violation of this law for flushing clean water through sensors instead of bilge water. Two more recent regulations are Title XIV of the Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Bill and the International Safety Management (ISM) Code. Title XIV, signed and passed in 2000, requires the Coast Guard to develop monitoring and reporting programs for all ship discharges and authorizes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish “No Discharge Zones.” The ISM Code, passed in 1998, is an international standard requiring cruise ship owners and operators to establish safety management systems that include an environmental protection policy with procedures for pollution prevention. Alhough it is not responsible for criminal charges or fines directly, a ship must be certified through the ISM in order to be eligible for insurance.
Several types of pollutants are associated with cruise ships. The first is black water, the sewage from toilets and urinals aboard the ships, and it is estimated that a typical one-week voyage generates as much as 210,000 gallons of black water. Despite strict regulations about the treatment of black water, wastewater expelled from the ships into the sea has been found to contain high levels of fecal coliform bacteria.
A second type of pollutant is gray water; the waste from sinks, showers, galleys, and laundry facilities. The one million gallons of gray water generated on a one-week voyage often contain such contaminants as soaps, detergents, cleaners, oil, grease, metals, pesticides, plastics, hydrocarbons, and even large amounts of fecal wastes. This waste can legally be dumped anywhere, even though the EPA says that gray water may have adverse effects on the environment that are as great or greater than those of black-water waste.
A third type of pollutant includes paint, maintenance materials, and the hazardous waste that comes from the ship's photo-processing labs and dry-cleaning facilities. The chemicals that are produced can be extremely toxic and can have serious adverse effects on the environment. Yet another type of pollutant is solid waste, including food, plastic, paper, wood, cardboard, cans, glass, and other material typically disposed of as garbage. A one-week voyage on a typical ship generates eight tons of garbage, and ships often directly violate the strict disposal regulations by dumping the garbage at sea. One ship, the Ecstasy, was found to have dumped 16,000 pounds of garbage at sea.
A final type of pollutant is oily bilge water. The bilge is the lowest point in the ship's hull, where the seawater that seeps into the ship is collected and then pumped back out into the sea. On a typical one-week journey, a ship produces 25,000 gallons of bilge water, and oil from the ship's machinery gets into it. On many occasions, the Coast Guard has been able to prove that ships bypassed antipollution systems, falsified oil record books, and dumped oily bilge water into the ocean.
Of the eighty-seven confirmed U.S. illegal discharge cases, 93 percent (or eighty-one cases) were brought for discharging oil or oil-related chemicals, whereas the remaining six cases dealt with the illegal disposal of solid waste. Royal Caribbean pled guilty to a twenty-one felony charges in one $18-million decision in 1999, only one year after pleading guilty to other criminal charges resulting in a $9-million fine. The $18-million Carnival Cruise Line case was settled on April 19,2002, after Carnival pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to the falsifying of oil records on six of their ships. Holland America Cruises plea-bargained for a $2-million judgment in 1998 after discharging oily water in Alaska's Inside Passage. Seven other cruise lines have also faced criminal fines in the past twenty years, including Norwegian Cruise Lines ($1 million in 2002), Palm Beach Cruises ($500,000 in 1994), Princess Cruises ($500,000 in 1993), Regency Cruises ($250,000 in 1993), American Global Lines ($100,000 in 1994), Ulysses Cruises (two $75,000 fines in 1997), and Seaway Maritime ($75,000 in 1997).
The International Council of Cruise Lines (ICCL), an agency designed to keep member cruise lines in compliance with industry regulations, claims that there has been vast improvement in pollution prevention among member ships. In 2001, the ICCL announced that it had adopted mandatory environmental standards for all members, which covers, but is not limited to, gray-water and black-water discharge, hazardous chemical waste, unused pharmaceuticals, used batteries, and burned-out fluorescent or mercury vapor lamps. Ships must comply with these new standards in order to maintain or gain membership in the ICCL.
