ENVIRONMENT AT SEA: Ballast Water Management - Type-Approval requirements problem

The Korean Register of Shipping and KOSHIPA, the national shipbuilders association hosted the meeting in Busan, Korea. Representatives of all the three organisations stressed that it is a huge challenge to fit ballast water treatment equipment to all of the world's 70,000 ships.

They asserted that the slow pace of implementation of ballast water treatment equipment by IMO member states has negated the carefully staged implementation programme that was a feature of the original convention.

Now that the fixed time-line for implementation has passed without entry into force it means that, as soon as the Ballast Water Management Convention does meet its ratification criteria, thousands of ships will need to be fitted in a very short time.

Whilst strenuous efforts were made by industry, this will put unattainable demands on ship repair facilities, engineering capabilities and on the relatively small number of manufacturers that have developed suitable treatment equipment.

The meeting also expressed serious concerns about Type-Approval requirements. Having now gained some experience with the current requirements, Tripartite participants expressed the clear opinion that many serious shortcomings now need urgent attention. If nothing is done to address this situation, a very large number of treatment equipments costing billions of dollars may be required to be installed on ships with the prior knowledge that these systems may not always work reliably to the demanded biological efficacy.