Two Royal Visits Launch a Debate

On Jan. 24, San Francisco’s cruise ship terminal at Pier 35 will welcome the venerable Queen Elizabeth 2. Less than two weeks later, on Feb. 4, her newer, larger sister ship, the Queen Mary 2, will squeeze into Pier 27, which was recently dredged and outfitted for plus-size vessels like herself. At 1,132 feet long and 150,000 gross tons, its owner, Cunard Lines, calls the QM2 the grandest, most magnificent ocean liner ever built. And with The City’s more spacious Bryant Street Pier terminal not slated for completion until at least 2009, this grand dame will need just about every drop of space in her berth.

In the past four years, cruise ship traffic in San Francisco has doubled to nearly 100 calls and a quarter million passengers annually. Most of the increased traffic comes from shorter, cheaper excursions of under seven days. But the two Queens are not your average cruise ships. With flared hulls, painted funnels, staterooms larger than most penthouse suites and gloved stewards seeing to every need, these ladies of the sea recall the days of luxurious transatlantic travel. On its website, Cunard describes a voyage on one of their liners as a modern fairy tale at sea… where ordinary travelers can feel like royalty. And the price? If you have to ask, you should probably just stick with that bargain cruise to Cabo.

Despite their beauty and elegance, environmentalists say the two Queens share some unfortunate attributes with their less regal counterparts in the passenger ship industry.

For years, clean water advocates have lobbied government and industry to clean up the damage they say these massive vessels leave in their wakes. According to Bluewater Network, a San Francisco environmental group, a typical cruise ship generates 50 tons of garbage per week. Much of it is burned in onboard incinerators that spew noxious smoke into the air. Sinks, showers, and laundry equipment produce one million gallons of graywater in an average week, while 210,000 gallons of sewage result from toilets. Almost all of this waste is dumped into the ocean, much of it without being treated.

Cruise ships are like floating cities, said Terri Shore, the Clean Vessels Campaign director for Bluewater Network, in a phone interview. They produce huge volumes of [waste]… and it all goes overboard.

Because of various loopholes and exemptions, cruise ships are not subject to many of the strict discharge laws in the Clean Water Act.

Currently, the federal government permits passenger liners to dump anything besides plastic, oil and other hazardous chemicals, so long as they are at least three miles from shore. Within three miles of the coast, the federal government allows them to dump graywater and treated sewage. But even with those lax standards, environmentalists say the industry has a poor record of following the statutes that do exist on the books.

In 2002, Carnival Cruises, Cunard Lines’ parent company, paid $18 million in fines and clean-up costs for discharging oily waste. In 1999, Carnival’s biggest competitor, Royal Caribbean Cruises also paid $18 million for dumping hazardous materials and falsifying their records. Consolidation in the industry has given Carnival and Royal Caribbean the vast majority of the North American market.

California’s most publicized cruise ship mishap occurred in October 2002, when the Crystal Harmony dumped over 36,000 gallons of treated sewage and bilge water into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Because the incident occurred 14 miles off the coast, the action broke no laws. But officials in Monterey charged that Crystal Cruises had broken a written agreement not to dump in the sanctuary. In 2003, they banned the company from operating in the city. Crystal Cruises issued an apology and told the state Water Resources Board that they had fired the ship’s chief officer.

Environmentalists assert that cruise ships continue to pollute even after they arrive in port. While at the dock in hotelling mode, secondary engines remain on to power ships’ lighting and electrical systems. These engines can produce as much smog per day as over 12,000 cars. That’s as much, on a daily average, as PG&E’s infamous Hunter’s Point Power Plant.

On Jan. 1, 2007, the state Air Resources Board will enact new regulations to force cruise ships to use a low-sulfur content, marine distillate fuel within 24 miles of the California coast. Bluewater Network estimates that these cleaner fuels cut sulfur oxide emissions by 90%, particulate matter by 60%, and nitrogen oxides by between 6 and 10%.

Even with these cleaner fuels, however, ships will still create great amounts of smog while dockside. To solve this problem, clean air advocates have urged the Port of San Francisco to install shore-side power stations, where ships could plug-in to the city’s power grid. In July of 2006, the Port joined with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to require shore-side power at the future cruise terminal at the foot of Bryant Street. Cruise owners also took part in the agreement. Tom Dow, Carnival’s vice president of public affairs, quoted in a SFPUC press release from July 11, heralded the power plan as a win for the environment, Bay Area residents [and] the cruise industry. But with the new terminal’s development plan in limbo, it could be years until construction even begins. In the meantime, ships tied up at The City’s current facilities will continue to run their engines for power.

Another menace comes not in the form of pollution, but living organisms. Non-native, so-called invasive species stowaway in the ballast tanks of ocean-going vessels. When ships void these tanks near shore or in port, the unwanted species escape into the local ecosystem. Perhaps the most well-known of these invaders is the zebra mussel, which has devastated the Great Lakes; but California has also been plagued by its own share of pernicious flora and fauna introduced in ballast water.

In 2002, Bluewater Network and several other environmental advocacy groups sued Carnival Cruises for violating California ballast water regulations. The suit was ultimately settled in 2003, with Carnival admitting no wrongdoing. But the company agreed not to dump untreated ballast water into state waters and paid $200,000 to the California State Lands Commission.

In recent years, California lawmakers have taken steps to regulate the cruise industry in state waters. In addition to the low-sulfur fuel and ballast water rules, Sacramento passed legislation banning the industry from dumping treated sewage and bilge water or burning trash within the state’s jurisdiction.

On a local level, San Francisco used a $100,000 federal Environmental Protection Agency grant to start the Cruise Liner Emissions Reduction Incentive Project, which offers reduced docking fees to cruise ships that use cleaner-burning fuels.

To address concerns associated with construction of the new South Beach terminal slated in 2007-8, The City has also created an Environmental Impact Report and a Cruise Ship Terminal Advisory Committee (CSTAC) to reduce and prevent Bay pollution. But while environmentalists applaud the state’s new regulatory measures and The City’s recent mitigation efforts, they lament the federal government’s lack of action. Beyond state boundaries only miles from shore, cruise ships are still virtually unregulated.

Our water [in California] is pretty well protected, said Shore, And we’re hoping, with the new Congress, we’ll get some traction.

Shore also said that in 2007, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) plan to reintroduce their bill, The Clean Cruise Ship Act, which would impose strict new dumping laws on the industry. The bill was first introduced in 2004 and 2005, but, according to Shore, it went nowhere.

Bluewater Network says the cruise industry has spent billions lobbying Congress, with Carnival outpacing its competitors. The group alleges that between 1997 and 2004 Carnival gave $2.5 million to lobbyists.

The QE2 and her new sister ship, the QM2 both embody the pinnacle of shipbuilding for their respective eras. When their sculpted prows push through the shadow of the Golden Gate, they will christen a new era for San Francisco as a destination, once again, for such world-class liners. But environmental watchdogs hope the cruise industry will soon care as much about air and water quality as they do about luxury and passenger service.