Scrub-a-dub dump: Legislature not ready to set sail with ship exhaust crackdown

By Tom Banse, Salish Current

An international bid to reduce air pollution from ocean-going ships may be increasing water pollution in the Salish Sea. But a proposal to untangle this paradox went aground this winter for the second year in a row in the Washington Legislature.

Policymakers are zeroing in on the fuels ships burn, which affects the exhaust that goes into the air. Growing numbers of cargo ships have pollution scrubbers to clean their smokestack exhaust, only they then often flush the dirty scrubber washwater into the sea. 

To conservationists, the washwater dumping represents a “loophole” that needs to be closed to prevent an accumulation of toxic contaminants in the marine environment. As industry sees it, the competitive standing of Northwest ports could be endangered for minimal benefit.

The debate about what course to take is moving along the Inside Passage like a peripatetic cruise ship. The first stop was Olympia in January. Shift to Victoria in February. In March, the Alaska Legislature in Juneau. In April, the action returns to Seattle and then in May, perhaps Olympia again, the San Juan Islands and/or Ottawa.

Lovel Pratt, marine protection and policy director for Friends of the San Juans, said she is looking forward to reworking the Washington bill with partners in the months ahead and pushing for it again in 2027.

“I feel like there is a certain momentum,” Pratt said. “I think it’s a really important and achievable opportunity to reduce the pollution in our waters.”

Environmental advocates and like-minded lawmakers in Washington, British Columbia and Alaska want to require cargo ships, tankers and cruise liners to use only low-sulfur fuel when in state waters, as California already requires. The trouble is low-sulfur fuel is more expensive for vessel operators. But it’s cleaner burning, which makes exhaust gas scrubbers unnecessary. And that in turn achieves the advocates’ ultimate goal of eliminating scrubber wastewater discharges.

A squadron of industry and port representatives argue it’s too soon for more regulation.

The Chamber of Shipping of British Columbia emphasized to its federal government that, in the trade group’s view, “there is no conclusive scientific evidence demonstrating significant environmental harm” from shipboard exhaust gas cleaning systems, more commonly known as scrubbers. A senior vice president for the cruise line industry made a similar point in testimony to the Washington Legislature in January.

“This unnecessarily restricts authorized environmental technologies,” Donald Brown of the Cruise Lines International Association, or CLIA, said.

What happened in Olympia 

The three 40th Legislative District lawmakers — San Juan, Skagit, south Whatcom — exchanged concepts with port and shipping associations, but the sides don’t yet see eye to eye. The lead sponsor, state Rep. Debra Lekanoff, D-Bow, said cutting toxic contamination that could threaten the survival of the region’s critically endangered resident orcas was one of the factors that motivated her to act now. 

“Adoption of low-sulfur fuel will contribute to what we love most about Washington: clean water, clean air, healthier wildlife and our beloved salmon,” Lekanoff said.

Lekanoff gave two reasons for why her bill sank in committee in 2025 and again this year. She said the first reason was the estimated multimillion dollar cost to stand up a new regulatory unit in the state Department of Ecology. The Legislature’s budget writers made it clear to the members that any new programs that carried price tags would be nonstarters.

She also said the bill sponsors encountered concerted opposition from Washington ports.

The Columbia River ocean shipping association and Washington’s primary business lobby both testified that the proposed requirement for all large ships to switch to cleaner fuel when entering Northwest waters would create a burden that could deter some vessels from using Washington ports for importing critical cargo or any cargo at all.

“We are concerned about the effect that would have on maritime jobs and the economy of our state,” said Peter Godlewski of the Association of Washington Business.

How scrubbers work

Scrubbers allow ships to continue burning cheap but relatively dirty bunker fuel in nearshore waters, when otherwise they would have to switch to a more expensive low-sulfur blend under International Maritime Organization rules. The scrubbers work by spraying seawater inside a ship’s smokestack to “wash” sulphur oxides, heavy metals and particulate matter from the exhaust fumes. The resulting acidic, toxic brew then has to go somewhere, either be offloaded into a sewer system at the next port of call or more commonly just flushed overboard.

The Puget Sound Partnership told legislators that there’s scarce data for the volume of scrubber washwater being dumped in territorial waters. There is publicly available data showing lots of ocean-going ship traffic on Puget Sound; Washington seaports collectively recorded more than 5,000 arrivals and departures last year and southwestern British Columbia seaports added thousands more transits through the shared border waters.

Many parties to this debate were hoping to get more clarity about the risk to the environment from a real-world study commissioned by the Port of Seattle, Ecology and CLIA. The study researchers analyzed washwater samples taken directly from cruise ships sailing from Victoria to Seattle.

A draft of the results posted by Oregon State University in 2024 concluded that scrubber washwater dumping posed “minimal” risk to Puget Sound. It noted that big bodies of water like Puget Sound rapidly dilute the cruise ship discharges to levels below established thresholds for concern. 

Those findings displeased the environmental community who have since criticized aspects of the research methodology. The Ecology Department also submitted critical remarks on the draft. The study project manager said a revised manuscript is now beginning formal science journal peer review, which typically lasts months.

In the absence of a verdict about the local environmental effects, major cruise lines extended a voluntary agreement with the Port of Seattle not to dump scrubber wastewater anywhere in Puget Sound. The Alaska-bound cruise season ramps up in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., in mid-April.

Port of Seattle Executive Director Stephen Metruck told port commissioners that the voluntary pause on discharges would cover the 2026 cruise season.

“It’s my experience sometimes that voluntary agreements are much quicker and move much faster than regulatory efforts,” Metruck said.

Transboundary machinations

Across the U.S.-Canada maritime border, the government of Canada announced a year ago that it intended to phase in a prohibition on scrubber washwater discharges in Southern Resident killer whale habitat in British Columbia. That area includes the shipping lanes in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and onward toward the Port of Vancouver.

Over the past year, the regulatory agency Transport Canada said it engaged in consultations with affected parties. But it has given no indication of an implementation timeline.

This past month, impatient Victoria city councilmembers voted unanimously to send Transport Canada a letter urging action to stop discharge of scrubber wastewater.

“The impacts of scrubber effluent discharge can be severe on marine ecosystems. Many countries and ports have banned scrubber discharge inside their territorial waters,” wrote councilors Matt Dell and Jeremy Caradonna in their resolution memo. “It is crucial that the marine shipping and transportation industries continue to green themselves, and for the Federal government to play an active partnership role in reducing the environmental impacts of these industries on coastal communities.”