Battelle Recommends
Ballast Water Treatment Standards

The shipping industry is vital to the global marketplace, transporting cargo to and from all reaches of the world. In addition to valuable cargo, however, ships may transport thousands of microscopic organisms in their ballast water. These organisms have the potential to shift the ecological balance of marine ecosystems, can be extremely costly to control and eliminate, and may pose risks to public health. Governments and industry are moving to treat ballast water to prevent marine life exchange.

Battelle was awarded a contract by the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) in January 2001 to create and conduct two workshops to develop recommendations for the scientific, regulatory, and engineering basis by which to establish an effective, measurable ballast water treatment standard(s). The workshops with technical experts were conducted on both the east and west coasts.

In support of the workshops, Battelle conducted a literature search to identify, gather, review, and summarize the status of ballast water treatment. Collected information included:

• national and international developments of ballast water treatment alternatives,
• case studies of historical approaches,
• guidance on frameworks for developing enforceable treatment standards in a regulatory setting,
• studies of volumetric and biological effectiveness of ballast water exchange,
• current status of U.S. and international development of ballast water treatment standards and specific geographic issues related to standards, and
• protocols and definitions as necessary.

Information from the search was compiled and summarized for participants as a briefing package. Battelle facilitated consensus on the technical issues using traditional techniques and electronic groupware software. This software allows workshop participants to comment on discussions or communicate with participants in the meeting via written input to questions and to vote electronically on consensus issues using individual laptop computer stations.

The workshops were conducted April 17-19 in Mystic, Conn., and May 23-35 in Oakland, Calif. Battelle will summarize and report the workshops’ discussions and recommendations for ballast water treatment alternative standards. The report will describe the issues discussed and future issues, conclusions, and recommendations regarding ballast water treatment standards. The report should be available through the USCG Research and Development Center this summer.

For more information, contact Ms. Deborah Tanis or Dr. Carlton Hunt at (781) 934-0571, tanisd@battelle.org, hunt@battelle.org.