BY SKIP ALLEN, SR.

In the Bahamas, amazing wildlife abounds both above and below the water. While biodiversity is generally a good thing, sometimes we come across species that just don’t belong. Crossing paths with uninvited visitors turned permanent residents brings to mind a similar growing problem in our waters back home. And, unfortunately, what started off as one problem has now become two.

Foreign species of fish and mollusks have invaded inland and coastal waters and offset the natural balance of our ecosystems in many areas across the country. If we do not take aggressive action to stop their influx now, it may be too late.

These foreigners, from fish to invertebrates to shellfish, arrive at our shores via commercial cargo ships, which load their ballasts in distant seas taking on millions of gallons of water teeming with local organisms. Once the ship reaches its destination it unloads its ballast along with those species that unwittingly hitched a ride and now hunt for a new home in our harbors, the Great Lakes and our major rivers.

To combat this problem, a lawsuit brought against the EPA in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2006 tightened an appalling exemption to the Clean Water Act regarding ballast water. The lawsuit requires the EPA to regulate “incidental discharge,” (which “incidentally” includes your boat’s cooling water), from all vessels by September 2008. The wording of the regulation tightening the definition of incidental discharge as it stands applies to commercial and recreational vessels, and as a federal mandate it can be enforced in all U.S. waters. It will not only be illegal for freighters to discharge their ballast in our waters, it will be illegal to discharge the water from your boat’s sink, bilge, engine heat exchanger, and air conditioning, regardless of the fact that this discharge is typically recirculated to its original water source the same way coastal power plants discharge cooling water. Can you imagine the response from the electric companies’ lobby if they were no longer allowed to discharge cooling water?

By not differentiating between the destructive ballast water from ships and benign cooling water discharged by recreational boats, the federal court has overstepped the intention of protecting our waters from aquatic aliens and put us all at the mercy of the court.

This misguided ruling has the potential to create serious problems for the boating community. The law with its current language will require every recreational boat to have a permit for its benign or incidental discharge. That means some 18 million permits will have to be issued to people like you and me and enforced by the EPA and the states; permits and enforcement that will cost money to issue and enforce.

Fortunately, there is time to right this wrong and still protect our waters. The case is being reviewed as the EPA figures out how to address the court’s decision–this time our voice must be heard. Contact your representatives as well as the EPA’s Office of Oceans and Coastal Protection at (202) 566-1200, or the National Invasive Species Council at (202) 354-1891 and express your concerns about the 2006 U. S. District Court Order for Injunctive Relief.