Baltic Sea first in world to ban cruise ship wastewater dumping | Yle Uutiset | yle.fi
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On Friday the International Maritime Organization announced that ferries and ships would be banned from dumping untreated wastewater into the Baltic.
The ban is set to come into force in 2019 for newer ships and in 2021 for older vessels. The ban is chiefly directed towards the large ships that cruise the Gulf of Finland in the summer.
The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, HELCOM, works to protect the marine environment of the Baltic Sea, and has been campaigning for the sea-dumping ban for the past decade.
Hermanni Backer, the professional secretary of HELCOM’s maritime, response and fish departments, said that once the measure goes into effect, the Baltic will be the world’s first sea region which outright bans passenger vessels’ commonplace sewage-dumping practices.
“This is actually very important,” Backer said. “We have gotten a concrete decision and that’s always positive. Now the most important thing is to get all countries [in the region] onboard. There is a slight risk that Russia would not participate,” he said.
#eaux_usées #pollution #assainissement #océan #Baltique #navigation via Pierre Ageron sur l’oiseau bleu
