With the proliferation of cruise ships along Maine’s coast, it is only natural that environmental regulators want to develop strong policies to prevent the degradation of the water and creatures that live in it. Lawmakers are currently grappling with how best to do this. Although not popular with those who favor stringent regulations, a compromise crafted by the Department of Environmental Protection that allows ships to certify that they will not discharge in Maine waters is likely the best result that can be hoped for.

Late last year, the DEP issued a report calling for new rules requiring ships carrying more than 50 passengers to register with the state and pay

a fee of up to $3,750 per voyage to discharge wastewater along the coast.

The money would be used to monitor effluent and the effectiveness of ships’ wastewater treatment systems. Maine would have been the first state in the country to charge such fees.

Soon after the report was released the Department of Economy and Community Development raised concerns that the fees would stifle Maine’s growing popularity as a cruise ship stop. So the fees were quickly scrapped by DEP.

Without the fees the DEP does not have money to monitor cruise ships

for compliance with the proposed discharge licensing requirements also called for in the report. Without money to do compliance and enforcement, Maine’s discharge laws effectively become voluntary.

That left the department to propose the compromise plan last week. Under this plan, large ships coming to Maine must agree to adhere to an industry-wide memorandum of understanding that prohibits the discharge of wastewater within four miles of the shore.

If they do not do this “self certification,” they must apply to DEP for a discharge license. The DEP will study what to do with smaller ships.

At the same time, the DEP will move ahead with creating no-discharge zones along the coast of Maine, starting with Casco Bay. These zones will primarily apply to smaller, recreational vessels that do not have the sophisticated wastewater treatment systems now standard on many cruise ships.

With 150 ships expected to stop in Maine this year, there is reason for concern. Large vessels can produce up to 250,000 gallons of wastewater daily, as much as some Maine communities, but far less than Bangor’s 8 million gallons daily. The discharge consists

of gray water – from showers, washing machines, pools – and black water, which is essentially sewage. Both are typically treated and dumped at sea.

Some of the most sophisticated ships have what amount to small municipal treatment plants on board that produce effluent that is far cleaner than what some Maine municipal water treatment plants discharge. These state-

of-the-art ships are not the ones that come to Maine.

The DEP is on the right track in encouraging the industry, which relies on clean oceans to attract passengers,

to police itself. If this approach does not work, stringent licensing requirements should be revisited, but not without first figuring out how to raise money for DEP enforcement efforts without penalizing an industry that contributes more to the Maine economy each year.