The purpose of this paper is to present a case history of the successful demonstration of a technical program by American industry and government which offers a beginning to the rational solution of the vessel pollution problem.
The existence of thousands of large vessels and offshore oil platforms, and millions of recreational watercraft provides the source for substantial contribution to the pollution of America's inland waterways. Sanitary, culinary, bilge, and ballast wastes represent some of the major irritants.
Government and industry, both separately and collectively, have embarked on programs to contain or manage the problem, and in this section the authors will identify many of the methods, from the simplest to some of the most sophisticated, that have been and are being used. The program of how a major corporation in the United States has brought its resources to bear on this problem will be presented.
This case history will develop the background utilized, the award of a government contract which has been successfully completed, and the joint efforts by two industrial organizations to push the solution of the problem as quickly as possible. It will explore the results of waterborne tests on major equipments, and how these results vary as a condition of such items as vessel complements, flushing water characteristics, pitch, roll, etc.
A summary of two Company programs, one with the Environmental Protection Agency, the other with the U.S. Steel Corporation, will be presented. The authors are representatives of the General Electric Company's Re-Entry and Environmental Systems Division. They are Messrs. John G. Federico, Armond J. Bryce, Peter Shelley all of whom are associated with the Company's Water Resources Program. Their biographical sketches will be presented with the full text of the paper.
Approximately 47,000 large vessels of over 1000 OWT navigate in America's coastal and inland waterways. In addition, there are an estimated 1.6 million smaller craft with sanitary facilities. Virtually none of these vessels have waste treatment or containment facilities, and in bodies of water that support high concentrations of traffic from shipping and pleasure craft, they may contribute significant quantities of pollutants. In certain bodies of water that are not subject to tidal cleansing or rapid uni-directional stream flow, the natural ability of the body of water to absorb this waste can be easily overcome.
Certainly, it is not intended to offer here a comparison of major pollution sources with the pollution caused by vessels. Across the spectrum, vessels, even in large concentrations, couldrarely cause such drastic effects as are caused by industrial dumpings off the lower Gulf coast of Florida, phosphate mining near the tidal estuaries has been implicated as the cause of major changes in shrimp migration patterns; in Lake Erie the major contributor to the problem has been the unrestricted dumping of wastes from many industrial operations. However, the organic loading from overboard dumping of vessel wastes is a contributing factor to the overall problem and in certain cases, a dominant one.
