National

More Great Lakes ports tracking greenhouse gas emission

Published

5 years ago

July 7, 2019

FILE - In this May 31, 2002 file photo, the sun sets over the Mackinac Bridge and the Mackinac Straits as seen from Lake Huron. The bridge is the dividing line between Lake Michigan to the west and Lake Huron to the east. President Donald Trump again is trying to drastically reduce or eliminate federal support for cleanups of some iconic U.S. waterways. His proposed budget would slash Environmental Protection Agency funding for Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay restoration programs by 90 percent. It would kills all EPA spending on programs supporting other waters including San Francisco Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and Puget Sound. The administration made a similar attempt last year but Congress refused to go along. (AP Photo/Al Goldis, File)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A recent report finds around one-third of participating ports in the United States and Canada, including those in Duluth and Milwaukee, are keeping a detailed inventory of greenhouse gas emissions.

The tracking is part of the Green Marine environmental certification program, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. The voluntary effort was formed in 2007 for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.

West Coast program manager Eleanor Kirtley said the program has seen a 12% increase in the number of participants, which includes ship owners, shipyards and port authorities. The program’s overall mission, she said, is to advance environmental excellence among its 133 participants.

“We focus on continual self-improvement,” Kirtley said.

The participants conduct self-evaluations that are verified by a third party regarding their performance on efforts to reduce the risk of invasive species, greenhouse gas emissions, spills, waste and cargo losses. They rated their performance from levels 1 through 5. Lower levels represent monitoring of regulations and best practices and higher levels reflect the incorporation of new technologies and excellence in leadership.

The Duluth Seaway Port Authority, which manages facilities at the largest port on the Great Lakes, maintained a rating of level 4 or higher on areas like minimizing spills, cargo losses and environmental leadership. Jeff Stollenwerk, the port authority’s government and environmental affairs director, promised improvment in areas like waste management and greenhouse gas tracking.

“We’re evolving from a system that pretty much focused solely on carbon dioxide emissions,” he said.

Port Milwaukee, the program’s only participating port in Wisconsin, has also been upgrading its environmental leadership and taking more inventory of emissions produced by their equipment and buildings over the last several years, according to Brian Kasprzyk, port field engineer. He said there’s always room to grow.

“We still need to do some work as far as documentation and some policies and actually getting it in writing,” he said. “A lot of the stuff we communicate verbally with our tenants.”

Port Milwaukee maintained a level 3 status on environmental leadership and greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report.

Port and Seaway participants showed the greatest improvement in 2018, according to the report. It said results among ship owners on efforts to reduce the risk of aquatic invasive species indicate “greater feasibility of ballast water treatment systems within the marketplace.” The findings showed seven of 18 ship owners were using a treatment system on one or more vessels.

Information from: Wisconsin Public Radio, http://www.wpr.org