There was a great editorial in the P-I over the weekend in which the writer Daniel Jack Chasan said (and this is Seattlest’s Paraphrase): The Sound is a mess. The Sound was a mess in the 80’s and we said we’d fix it and we never wanted to foot the bill so the Sound is mess now and we’re saying we’ll fix it and we won’t foot the bill. That was the gist of it, but it’s worth going to read for yourself if you haven’t.

And Chasan is right - The Sound is a mess and the added cruise ship traffic Holland America will be inflicting on us this summer is going to exacerbate the situation in Elliot Bay.

WashPIRG enumerates the environmental cost of a cruise ship:

In a day, a typical cruise ship of 3000 passengers and crew generates as much waste as a small city:

- 11.5 tons of garbage from the passengers alone.

- 23 gallons of toxic waste, including silver nitrate (from photo labs), heavy metals, and PERC (perchloroethylene, from dry-cleaning facilities).

- 30,000 gallons of sewage and additional tons of sewage sludge.

- 270,000 gallons of graywater, the wastewater from sinks, showers, dishwashing, and laundry.

- 7,000 gallons of oily bilge water.

- Air pollution equivalent to that produced by more than 12,000 automobiles.

Holland America announced on January, 5 that they would be increasing the number of cruises leaving Elliot Bay this summer from 37 to 61. The Seattlest Subtractulator says that’s 24 additional cruises. The Seattlest Multiplicatron 2000 says that’s 552 additional gallons of toxic waste, 168,000 additional gallons of bilge water, 720,000 additional gallons of sewage etc etc. The Seattlest Multiplicatron 2000 just blew a circuit tabulating the environmental destruction of 24 additional cruises.

And while other left coast states like California and Alaska have laws governing the activities of the floating resorts, Washington has a measly “Memorandum of Understanding.” ALASKA has a law, and we don’t. If Alaska’s Senator Stevens had anything to say about it the state would build a land bridge composed of oil-slicked caribou carcasses all the way to Russia for $10 of pork, and yet they have a law protecting their waters from cruise ships and Washington has a “Memorandum of Understanding.” Really, if there’s anything that sounds wimpier than “Memorandum of Understanding” we’d like to hear it. Why don’t we just ask them to pinkie swear? That’ll put the fear of financial sanctions into them.

Here’s one of the stipulations of our deal with the devil (PDF):

Requires cruise ships to monitor and report discharges, while empowering the state Department of Ecology to independently monitor discharges. State monitoring would be funded by charging cruise lines a per-passenger fee of no more than $1.75.

Can’t we get more than a buck seventy-five from an Arkansas blue hair to make sure she doesn’t dump her colostomy bag into the Sound while she waits for the next bingo session? In 2004 there were 14 ships covered by the pinkie swear and two of them violated it and both of those reported themselves. That’s mighty honest of them, no doubt, but it illustrates the point that State Department of Ecology is not funded to monitor for infractions. The best thing the DOE could think to say about the pinkie swear in 2004 was that it, “Did not lessen the state’s authority to enforce Washington’s water quality laws.” They go on (with a little help from Seattlest):

Admittedly, the MOU (Pinkie Swear) also has its limitations (we keep it in the head): it is a voluntary agreement that cannot be enforced through legal channels ("cannot be enforced" being the operative phrase) ; not every cruise ship that travels through Washington’s waters is covered by the MOU (ok only a few token sacrificial lambs), either because it does not make a port of call while in Washington waters or because it is not a member of the Northwest Cruiseship Association; air quality issues are not covered by the MOU (“Air pollution equivalent to that produced by more than 12,000 automobiles” per day); and lack of dedicated funding (we ain't got shit) hinders Ecology’s ability (we can't do shit) to monitor whether and how the MOU is implemented.

Washington needs legislation protecting the Sound from the cruise industry. California has it. Alaska has it. We need it.