The dirtiest remaining industrial polluter in the Midwest floats. It is the fleet of 133 giant lake freighters (Lakers) that hauls bulk material like salt, iron ore, coal, limestone, and grain up and down the Great Lakes to ports in both the USA and Canada, passing close to the greatest concentrations of people in the Midwest. In performing its job of enforcing the Clean Air Act the US EPA has proposed new regulations that will require that the Lakers clean up their act, saving 33,000 lives a year and reducing smog throughout the heartland. You might think that the EPA had a pretty good idea here. Not everyone would agree.
The Lake Carriers’ Association, the Lakers’ trade group, says that they know that the Lakers are dirty. They really think that the idea of clean air is generally good, just not when it costs them money. Now they are calling on their friends in congress and the Canadian government to make the big, bad EPA leave them alone.
At the center of this issue is the fuel that the Lakers burn, “bunker fuel,” or simply “bunker” for short.
Wikipedia says, “Bunker fuel is technically any type of fuel oil used aboard ships. It gets its name from the containers on ships and in ports that it is stored in; in the days of steam they were coal bunkers but now they are bunker-fuel tanks.” So when they switched to the tar-like petroleum residue they now use, they kept calling it bunker, presumably because they don’t like to change.
Today’s bunker fuel is in a class of fuels called “residual fuel oils,” meaning the gunk that is left over after they make other fuels like gas and lighter diesel, kerosene, naphtha, etc. It is so thick that it must be heated to flow, and burns so dirtily that the boilers have to have the soot cleaned out of them daily. In addition to the nitrogen oxide (think smog) and soot, bunker produces 174 tons of CO2 per one million BTUs produced, and contains 30,000 parts per million (ppm) of sulfur. The fuel semis use contains just 15 ppm sulfur and produces 161 tons of CO2 per million BTUs.
An article from today’s Washington Post points out,
Large vessels rank second only to power plants as to the health risk their air pollution poses, and the EPA estimates the proposal will produce more health benefits than those it has applied to off-road vehicles, diesel trucks and other sources. Without further regulation by 2030, the agency projects that smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions from the ships will more than double, to 2.1 million tons a year.
Almost as troubling is that, according to Wanda Fabriek, International Fuel Executive of Intertek Oil, Chemicals and Agri, writing for Bunker World,
The chemistry of residual fuels is probably the most complex of the oil barrel and some of the components of the final blend are, it must be accepted, resultants rather than controlled fractions. Furthermore, as the various specification grades of residual fuels are not blended at the refineries the particular chemistry of the vast variety of possible cutter stocks available to the supply chain also needs to be added to the total unknown.
So exactly what is coming out of the stack isn’t known.
What is known is that burning bunker fuels should be a crime. One of our most pristine and remote national parks, Isle Royale in northern Lake Superior, has smog issues! And remember that what goes up must come down, so eventually the air-borne pollutants will become water pollution.
Yes, this new rule would cost the Laker industry money. (They will also enjoy some cost savings by burning a cleaner fuel that is a liquid at ambient temperatures, requiring less boiler maintenance and no pre-heating equipment maintenance.) Every other industry in the country has had to clean up its act, why should these guys get a pass? They maintain that the costs to retrofit or build new Lakers will cause them to be priced out of the bulk hauling business. The fact is, no other form of transportation can even come close to the efficiencies and volumes that a lake freighter can for hauling bulk materials, and all of their customers are already set up for receiving goods from these freighters. Allowing them to continue to be one of the worst polluters in the country is unconscionable from an environmental and public health standpoint and gives them an unfair business edge on the commerce side.
It’s time that these industrial polluters were required to come into the 21st century and do their part for the Great Lakes region’s health and well being. After all, if it weren’t for these lakes they wouldn’t exist, and for them to see the lakes only as their private seaway is arrogant in the extreme. There are millions of other residents and visitors who use the lakes for a variety of reasons that do not depend upon the Lakers, but do depend upon clean air and clean water.
Will you please take a minute to contact your Senators or Representative in DC and tell them that an exemption for this industry is not consistent with the long-term health of our region or the planet?
