Cruise ships are subject to federal rules that limit how much they can pollute the water with toxic chemicals that originate from their exhaust. Think: heavy metals and leftover fuel oil.
But federal data shows that a subset of ships violate those standards in Alaska hundreds of times a year. And regulators don’t appear to be doing much about it.
That’s the key takeaway from data released in August by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, a Juneau based group.
Every year, cruise ships provide annual reports to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that disclose how many times they’ve discharged water that does not meet federal safety standards.
Aaron Brakel, a clean water campaigner at the organization, dug through reports from 46 operators in 2023 and 2024. All told, he found that 17 ships reported more than 700 violation days in Alaska in the two-year time frame.
Those violations came exclusively from vessels that use open-loop scrubber systems. Those systems suck in sea water to “scrub” toxic chemicals, including sulfur, from engine exhaust – and then dump it back in the ocean. That’s different from closed-loop scrubbers, which dispose of the discharge onshore.
“It’s troubling that even with these very weak permit standards, and very weak self-reporting requirements, that the ships with open-loop scrubbers are still reporting hundreds of violations of the limits every year,” Brakel said.
Open loop systems help cruise ships comply with international air pollution requirements that took effect in 2020. They do so by allowing ships to emit less air pollution while still burning cheap, heavy fuel.
That in turn has created a relatively new source of ocean pollution in Alaska that critics say has major implications for marine ecosystems.
“That can have a tremendous number of impacts on organisms in the marine environment,” Brakel said.
One study, published in 2021, found that exposure to gas scrubber discharge led to “severe toxic effects” for a tiny crustacean, known as a Pelagic Copepod, near the bottom of the ocean food web.
Gene McCabe heads the water division at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, which doesn’t regulate this type of discharge. He said federal standards for each pollutant were set using statistical data that suggests discharges that meet those standards shouldn’t harm people or marine life.
“Whenever we go beyond those water quality standards, we’re in a murkier area,” McCabe said. “We’re in a murky area because we can’t really say for certain that it is safe or that there will be damage or that there will be impacts.”
An EPA permit sets limits for pollutants including acidity, concentration of heavy metals and leftover fuel oil. But Brakel says violations of those standards have rarely led to federal enforcement.
“It’s a story of an orphaned permit, where these scrubber discharge requirements have never been enforced,” Brakel said.
In an emailed statement, the EPA declined to comment on enforcement matters. But the agency did note that it has taken enforcement actions against Carnival Corporation, including in 2017. That was after the company installed open-loop scrubbers on its ships starting in 2014.
By 2016, all but one of its Alaska vessels had violated federal acidity standards, according to state documents.
The company eventually paid a $14,500 fine and agreed to work toward addressing the issue, including by closely monitoring scrubber discharge pH and improving its scrubber systems.
But EPA also responded by loosening the existing standard while the company worked to remedy the problem – a policy Brakel said is still in place today.
McCabe, with the state, said he can’t speak to the federal enforcement strategy. But he emphasized that his department is still paying close attention.
“It is probably driving the reason why we are keeping an eye on scrubbers ourselves. Even though it’s not our permit, it’s still our water,” McCabe said. “And we want to at least have data where we can get it.”
Brakel, the conservationist, also took issue with the violation reports themselves. They don’t include when or where the violations took place. As he sees it, that keeps cruise towns from using the information to hold the industry accountable.
“If people can’t tell that this is happening, they have no way to respond to the industry to say,’ “Hey, what are you doing? Hey, these are our waters. Hey, this is our food,’” Brakel said.
The industry group Cruise Lines International Association did not respond to a request for comment.
