Ballast Water Regulation In The United States
Ballast water discharge typically contains a variety of biological materials, including plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria. These materials often include non-native, nuisance, exotic species that can cause extensive ecological and economic damage to aquatic ecosystems. Ballast water discharges are believed to be the leading source of invasive species in U.S. marine waters, thus posing public health and environmental risks, as well as significant economic cost to industries such as water and power utilities, commercial and recreational fisheries, agriculture, and tourism. Studies suggest that the economic cost just from introduction of pest mollusks (zebra mussels, the Asian clam, and others) to U.S. aquatic ecosystems is more than $6 billion per year.
The National Invasive Species Act of 1996 was passed as a means of controlling the invasion of aquatic invasive species.
The zebra mussel, native to the Caspian and Black Seas arrived in Lake St. Clair in the ballast water of a transatlantic freighter in 1988 and within 10 years spread to all of the five neighbouring Great Lakes. The economic cost of this introduction has been estimated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at about $5 billion.
Read more about Ballast Water Regulation In The United States: United States Regulation of Ballast Water Discharge
Famous quotes containing the words united states, water, regulation, united and/or states:
“In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad about the whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“As must have rung the harvest-song of Linos
Of bloody water in a heap of stones.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Nothing changes my twenty-six years in the military. I continue to love it and everything it stands for and everything I was able to accomplish in it. To put up a wall against the military because of one regulation would be doing the same thing that the regulation does in terms of negating people.”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)
“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Money is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)