By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Federal legislation authored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that gives commercial fishing boats and other small commercial vessels a two-year moratorium from discharge permits under the Clean Water Act is now federal law.

The measure, a companion bill to the Clean Boating Act, also directs the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a study to determine the types, volumes and effects of discharges from commercial vessels of different sizes and categories. The EPA would provide a report to Congress within 15 months that would be used to determine if permanent exemptions are warranted.

The Clean Boating Act provides a permanent exemption to recreational vessels to the same incidental discharge permits under the Clean Water Act. President Bush signed both measures into law July 31.

“In Alaska, the 9,700 vessels that make up the commercial fishing fleet are predominantly small boats, with an average length of 36 feet,” Murkowski said in a statement issued Aug. 4. “Similar to recreational boasts, they operate seasonally, spending around 90 days on the water each year.

“Commercial vessel discharges are comparable to recreational for the same-sized vessels. Although the recreational sector was able to get an exemption, it is my hope that the commercial vessel study will provide the data to justify a similar exemption for the commercial sector.”

Discharges incidental to the normal operation of vessels have been exempt from the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits under the Clean Water Act since 1973. The NPDES was developed for industrial sources of pollution and was not designed for mobile sources, Murkowski said.

In 2006, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act in exempting these discharges and issued an order revoking the exemption and requiring the agency to permit these discharges by Sept. 30, 2008. The EPA has appealed the decision, but in the interim, the agency has proposed to permit both recreational and commercial vessels under two general permits.

Murkowski said that neither recreational nor small commercial vessels have documented discharge levels that have been shown to be harmful to the environment. The court case that required the EPA to develop a permit system was focused on invasive species and ballast water. Neither recreational nor small commercial vessels have ballast tanks and few are ocean-going vessels.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a co-sponsor of the moratorium measure, said he hoped that eventually the exemption for commercial and recreational vessels would be made permanent.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com">margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.