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Grey water, grey area in Arctic Ocean

Cruise ships, fishing boats and barges can’t haul all their wastewater they create doing laundry, showering and cleaning, and conservation advocacy group World Wildlife Fund Canada says their practice of dumping it into the Arctic Ocean is falling through the regulatory cracks.

“In 2016 we had 33 million litres of water [discharged into the Arctic Ocean],” said Melissa Nacke, specialist for Arctic shipping and marine conservation at WWF-Canada. “However, in 20 years we're expecting a doubling to 60 million litres of grey water. We need to get the rules right, right now.”

This map shows the concentration of grey water in the Arctic and how it affects important wildlife areas. graphic courtesy of World Wildlife Fund

Currently, there are no provisions related to grey water—which comes from showers, baths, laundry, dishwasher and galley wastewater—in the Arctic Shipping Safety and Pollution Prevention Regulations, which govern waters north of the 60th parallel.

Grey water can contain nutrients, oils and grease, soaps, metals, microplastics, bacteria and pathogens, hair, bleach and other contaminants that can damage ocean ecosystems.

The unregulated dumping of this water can cause algal blooms and shellfish contamination, among other problems.

In Canadian waters south of the 60th parallel, the existing Vessel Pollution and Dangerous Chemicals Regulations require passenger vessels built after 2013 and carrying more than 500 passengers to treat grey water before it is released, and to release it more than three nautical miles from the shore.

In Alaska, there are stringent guidelines for dumping grey water in Arctic waters, which puts Canadian Arctic waterways at further risk, said Nacke.

“Ships can essentially come around Alaska and then use Canada as a literal dumping ground for grey water,” she said.

Nacke said ideal regulations would be close to Alaska’s, setting standards for both onboard treatment of water before dumping and for the distance from shore and sensitive areas that dumping can occur.

The reason for the regulatory gap, said Nacke, boils down to Canada’s regulations having been developed and put in place in 1972, before there was much sea traffic in the North.

The language around waste in the regulations is vague, allowing many operators to define their grey water as not being waste, which eliminates any rules for where and how much it can be dumped, she said.

WWF-Canada just released a study on how much grey water is dumped in the Arctic and how much is expected to be dumped in the future, taking into account increased traffic as the sea ice lessens and mining, cruise, shipping and fishing traffic increases.

The study, completed by Vard Marine Inc., builds on an earlier one commissioned by Transport Canada and also conducted by Vard.

In an email response from Transport Canada, senior communications advisor Annie Joannette said Transport Canada is researching the feasibility of grey water treatment in the Arctic.

“The information could be used to amend the existing Vessel Pollution and Dangerous Chemicals Regulations to address the issue of greywater discharge north of 60 degrees latitude,” she wrote.

Nacke said leadership on this issue has been taken up by a lot of operators, citing the highly publicized 2016 Northwest Passage tour by the cruise ship Crystal Serenity as an example.

“Crystal Serenity, when they came through, they were exempted by Transport Canada because they claimed that none of their cleaning products were defined as waste,” said Nacke. “So, technically, they were allowed to discharge wherever they wanted.”

Despite this, they discharged all their waste 25 nautical miles from the shore, which is “a pretty big distance,” she said.

“It was still untreated. It's still not great,” said Nacke. “But they were aware of the issue and were trying to address it. Future operators might not do that.”