In a news release from February 12 of this year, the coast guard and the Environment Protection Agency signed a memorandum stating that they will coordinate efforts to help stop vessels such as cruise liners, commercial fishery vessels, oil tankers and others from dumping waste into the ocean. This waste includes anything from sewage, to ballast water that's used to stable ships, to even rain run off from the decks.
It's nice to see that the government and other agencies are stepping up and seeing that this is a problem. The difficult part of enforcing this (from what I see) is that if you come across a vessel doing this in open water, then who is the one who punishes them? Is it the nation of the vessel whose dumping? Is is the nation of the Coast Guard who catches them? Is it the nation of the waters that they're currently in, or a combination of all these countries? It's little problems like these that let ships get away with their dumpings, because if they get caught, the price that they pay for it is a lot less than the price they would have to pay to keep their wastes on board. So realistically the ships are getting a good deal if they're dumping their wastes. The penalties need to be higher, and they need to be enforced quicker instead of being stuck in limbo with politics and who charge these polluters.
Cheers
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