Talking Points

The Ballast Water Management Act...

• Prevents all foreign ships from releasing their likely contaminated ballast water into U.S. harbors, unless they have performed an open-sea ballast water exchange. This act is based primarily on Oregon’s 2001 SB 895, which passed both the House and Senate unanimously.

Ballast water is flooding the U.S. with harmful foreign species.

• Ballast water is the largest source of foreign species invading the U.S.
• Estimates are that ships pump some 21 billion tons of ballast into U.S. waters every year; that is, 40,000 gallons a minute or nearly 700 gallons a second.(1)

Researchers have found large volumes of dangerous bacteria and viruses in ballast water.

• Ballast water discharged by the world’s ocean-going ships creates a long-distance dispersal mechanism for dangerous human diseases.
• Ballast water can also transport cholera around the world. In 1991, the bacterium that causes cholera was discovered in oysters and fish in Mobile Bay, Alabama.(2) One-third of the ships arriving from South America in Alabama carried this bacterium.

Foreign species in ballast water cost the U.S. economy billions.

• One study estimates that the total cost of invasive species in the United States amounts to more than $100 billion each year.(3) 
• The zebra mussel invasion has caused billions of dollars in damages. It has clogged the water systems of cities, factories, and power plants. It has fouled boat hulls and maritime structures, sunk navigational buoys, and contaminated recreational beaches with sharp-edged mussel shells and rotting mussel flesh.(4)
• The invasive sea lamprey has decimated trout and other fish stocks in the Great Lakes. Canada and the U.S. spend $13 million a year attempting to control this pest.(5)

Foreign species in ballast water are devastating to ecosystems.

• When alien species enter an ecosystem, they can disrupt the ecosystem’s natural balance, reduce biodiversity, degrade habitats, alter native genetic diversity, transmit exotic diseases to native species, and further jeopardize endangered plants and animals. 
• When there are no established natural controls, such as predators, to keep the non-native harmful species in check, there can be a population explosion of the invasive non-native species, causing an ecological catastrophe.

Foreign species in ballast water increase the threat of extinction for thousands of endangered species.

• According to the United Nations Environment Programme, some 20 percent of all freshwater fish species are at risk of becoming extinct in the near future because of invasive species.(5)
• Invasive species impact nearly half of the species currently listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S Endangered Species Act.

Open-sea exchange can be the best solution.

• According to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, ballast water exchange, which involves replacing coastal water with open-ocean water during a voyage, is the only effective management tool to reduce the risk of ballast-mediated invasion.(6) 
• The International Maritime Organization (IMO) recommends ballast water exchange as a voluntary measure because this process reduces the density of coastal organisms in ballast tanks that may be able to invade a recipient port, replacing them with oceanic organisms with a lower probability of survival in near-shore waters.(6)

Similar legislation has received strong, bipartisan support.

• SERC’s ballast water management sample bill is based primarily on Oregon’s SB 895, which, in 2001, passed both the House and Senate unanimously.