EPA Plans Clean-Air Zones

The Environmental Protection Agency on March 30 proposed creation of an emissions control area that would require ships to burn cleaner fuels within 230 miles (200 nautical miles) of U.S. coasts.

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, speaking Monday at Port Newark, N.J., said the proposal was submitted Friday to the International Maritime Organization.

Last October, the IMO adopted Annex VI of the 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, which allowed member countries to establish offshore zones inside which vessels would be required to burn low-sulfur fuels. Congress ratified the annex a month later.
The EPA last week was criticized by the agency’s inspector general for not following through on establishing the control areas.
"This is an important -- and long overdue -- step in our efforts to protect the air and water along our shores, and the health of the people in our coastal communities," Jackson said. She spoke at an announcement ceremony also attended by Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Reps. Donald Payne and Albio Sires, all D-N.J., and by Charles D. Connor, president of the American Lung Association.

The IMO, a United Nations agency, will begin reviewing the proposal in July. Approval could come as soon as next year, the EPA said.

Under the EPA proposal, ships operating within the coastal zone could use fuel with no more than 1,000 parts per million of sulfur beginning in 2015. The EPA said this requirement is expected to reduce emissions of particulate matter and sulfur oxides by more than 80 percent. Beginning in 2015, newer ships would have to use advanced emission-control technologies that reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 80 percent.

The EPA said most ships already can store two or more fuels, which would allow them to switch to cleaner-burning fuels within the coastal buffer zone. The agency said some ships would need to be modified to burn low-sulfur diesel, or equipped with scrubbers that remove sulfur from vessels' exhausts.

The 200-nautical-mile buffer zone would cover all coasts of the United States but would not extend into the marine areas of any other other country except Canada. It also would exclude the U.S. Pacific territories, the unpopulated western Hawaiian islands, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Aleutian islands and western Canada, and the U.S. and Canadian Arctic. Jackson said further studies are needed before buffer zones are proposed for those areas.