By Dan McCue
Staff Writer

The S.C. State Ports Authority and others in the maritime industry are taking a cold, hard look at how to reduce particulate emissions stemming from their operations as concerns about air pollution continue to rise.

A study published in November by the journal Environmental Science and Technology reports that tiny airborne particles released by the burning of intermediate-grade bunker oil on cargo ships kill at least 60,000 people a year by causing inflammations that eventually lead to heart and lung failure.

Distress over the potential local effect of these particulates, especially when combined with diesel emissions from other forms of supply chain transport, has also prompted the S.C. Coastal Conservation League to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In their suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Charleston in November, the league charges the corps erred in its issuance of a permit for the SPA’s planned terminal at the former Charleston Naval Base by not considering its impacts in a broad-enough context.

But with more than 90% of the world’s goods moving by ship today, and with the number of containers moving through the Port of Charleston projected to grow exponentially over the next several years, the SPA has tried to get ahead of the environmental curve, said Bernard S. Groseclose Jr., the SPA’s president and CEO.

“Some people would suggest that we’re some kind of aliens,” Groseclose said. “That somehow, we don’t breathe the air around here or drink the same water.”

Charleston has been identified as meeting national ambient air-quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a designation that Groseclose said “means that the air quality here has not, in fact diminished.” But he said the issue of air-quality protection should also be seen as a challenge.

“We’ve all heard of communities, particularly port communities on the West Coast, that have gotten in such a state that legislative action and the implementation of strict local rules were necessary,” he said. “We as a port and as residents of this community don’t want to be in the same spot.”

International air

One of the biggest challenges to protecting the air in Charleston is that almost all the ships that call on Charleston sail under foreign flags and are owned by shipping companies headquartered overseas.

While the shipping lines themselves are starting to deal with the issue, they’ve yet to arrive at or endorse a common standard for emissions that would have them all playing on the same page.

When Groseclose and other representatives of the SPA visited Asian shipping lines in November, they were heartened by the lines’ interest in the issue.

Since Jan. 1, 2007, the state of California, through which 40% of the nation’s cargo enters the country, has required ships sailing within 24 miles of its shores to use cleaner-burning fuels in auxiliary engines.

Outside of the protected zone, cargo ships can burn whatever fuel they want, but those not in compliance with the more stringent standard as they approach the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach can be fined or impounded.

In November, the California Air Resources Board went a step further, requiring all ships that enter the state’s ports to reduce emissions by either plugging into shoreside power grids or using alternative energy sources to run their lights, pumps and ventilation systems. Deadlines for those alternatives will be phased in beginning in 2010.

The EPA is moving forward with its own plan to curb emissions from the diesel engines on oceangoing carriers. The plan, which the EPA intends to roll out in stages, would establish particulate matter and sulfur oxide performance standards starting in 2011 that would apply to all vessels operating in U.S. coastal waters.

Taking action

James J. Corbett, a University of Delaware professor who led the emissions mortality study, used two independent inventories of the emissions produced by the shipping industry.

His researchers fed these figures into climate models to predict where the winds would carry the emissions and added population density figures for the areas affected.

Using this, they were able to compare the concentrations of the particles with the incidence of premature deaths to arrive at an estimate of the total number of deaths that can be attributed to shipping emissions.

Corbett said the study didn’t focus on specific port communities, rather it looked at global trends.

“The important thing to recognize is that these impacts are not confined to some hot spot or one or two trade routes,” he said. “Our study shows all the continents have an increased risk of human impacts because in our globalized economy, every continent is adjacent to a major shipping lane.”

While Corbett thinks ports can be proactive in reducing the impacts of emissions of a host of activities occurring around their terminals, ultimately the shipping lines themselves hold the key to reducing emission-related mortality.

Among other measures, the ports authority has switched many of its internal operations to ultra-low sulfur fuels and reduced truck idling by keeping the average turn around time for trucks at its terminals down to 20 minutes.

It has also hired a contractor to compile the port’s first emissions inventory. Work on that project is expected to be completed by September.

Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@setcommedia.com.

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