Украина была одной из первых стран, которые установили правила обращения с судовыми балластными водами, а в настоящее время она – одна из 6 пилотных стран по программе IMO/UNDP GloBallast. В то же время Украина не ратифицировала МЕЖДУНАРОДНУЮ КОНВЕНЦИЮ О КОНТРОЛЕ СУДОВЫХ БАЛЛАСТНЫХ ВОД И ОСАДКОВ И УПРАВЛЕНИИ ИМИ. Эта ситуация создает много противоречий и разночтений. Однако возможность исправить такое положение еще не утрачена.
Approaches to Ballast Water Management can vary widely around the world – see Getting to grips with the Ballast Water Management Convention by Captain Balwinder Singh Duggal MNI {Seaways, August 2011.) One of the most notable examples is the Ukraine. Ballast water sampling is compulsory, and the authorities focus on chemical, rather than biological analysis of the results. Many – even most – vessels fall foul of the legislation.
ome background information: In the early 1990s, Ukraine was one of the first countries to implement requirements for ballast water exchange in the Black Sea. At the time, the Black Sea was suffering from a decrease in fishing haul (from 100,000 tons per year to 15,000 tons), red tides, etc. Even now, fish stocks have not been restored in the Black Sea.
Ukraine was one of the six pilot countries in the IMO/UNDP GloBallast programme, which aimed to create unified requirements and an international approach to the ballast water problem. Within the framework of this programme, Ukrainian specialists developed several projects for ballast water treatment and monitoring equipment. They carried out a biological baseline survey in the port of Odessa and developed several proposals for Convention standards.
Compulsory sampling
However, in spite of the activity of the Ukrainian GloBallast team, local legislation has not changed since the 1990s. Ukraine has not ratified the BWM Convention and is not going to do so in the near future. The official position of Ukrainian authorities takes a blanket approach. Every vessel calling at a Ukrainian port must have a ballast water sample taken, without exception. Moreover, samples are subject to chemical analysis, but not biological. In
Seaways February 2012 other words, the main task of the analysis is to find whether levels of iron and suspended solids in the ballast water are within the specified limits, but not to detect the presence of alien species. In fact, the iron content of the ballast water of almost any existing ship is likely to be higher than allowed. If this happens, the ship will not be granted permission to discharge ballast, and will have to pay a penalty.
While MARPOL does not require compulsory analysis of iron content, the Ukraininan authorities refer to legislation which allows parties to the Convention to implement stricter requirements than those laid out in the Convention. At the same time, they ignore the section of the Convention which requires parties to avoid undue delay to ships.
All ships calling at Ukrainian ports should be ready for sampling of their ballast water and for the possible imposition of penalties.
Legal position
This situation has led to several court cases against Ukrainian ecology authorities. The results vary widely: in some cases the shipowners lost, but some of them finished with a positive result. These differences were caused by the unclear definition of ballast water in Ukrainian legislation and by some contradictions in Ukrainian laws (Merchant Marine Code, Water Code, Rules of Protecting Territorial Waters of Ukraine from Pollution, Water Sanitary Rules, etc.). For example, in some of these documents there is no clear definition of ballast water, or no definition of segregated ballast. In some cases the Ukrainian Authorities decided to consider ballast water as so-called ‘return water’. This is a term used in the mining industry, where water taken from natural sources is used for flushing material and afterwards returned to the environment. According to existing rules, this water must undergo a cleaning process before it is returned to the environment. The position of the Ukrainian authorities was: • as soon as ballast water is a part of a technological process (maintaining ship’s stability, etc.), it is considered to be ‘return water’;
• return water must be cleaned before returning to the environment. This was not done, so the shipowner is guilty.
This is just one of the most interesting examples, but it’s not typical. In some cases, segregated ballast water is regarded as sewage water or dirty water (hence the justification for sampling), which is also in contradiction with existing international practice.
Future developments
However, we have some positive news. Several draft papers have been prepared, aiming at least to create clear and transparent procedures for ship monitoring. One aim is to give sole right to monitoring vessels to Port State Control authorities (ballast water monitoring is currently the duty of Ecological Inspection). Another is to limit the number of authorities visiting the ship on arrival.
These steps are not enough to bring Ukraine in line with the rest of the world -it still needs major changes to its legislation – but I really hope they will be the first steps on the way to a better situation.
At a glance:
- The Master must be ready for immediate sampling when calling at a Ukrainian port;
- sampling is compulsory;
- sampling is carried out by ecology inspectors;
- analysis of samples takes some time;
- the ship is not allowed to pump out ballast till the results have been obtained;
- water is analysed for the presence of iron and suspended solids in ballast water (not for biological content);
- The results of such analysis in most cases are above the permitted limits, which leads to a penalty. Usually, the ship is allowed to pump out its ballast after paying the penalty.
Ukraine is slowly approaching a change of rules. This process is quite difficult, but we hope some changes will be implemented in the near future.
Автор: Captain Alexander Sagaydak
Источник: Seaways. – 2012. – February. – P. 15