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MADISON - State environmental officials say
they'll begin enforcing new ballast water regulations on Great Lakes
vessels in February.
The rules are designed to prevent the
spread of invasive species.
Under the new regulations, ships can't
discharge ballast tank sediment and seawater. They'll have to adopt best
management practices for handling those substances.
By the end of next year, the Department
of Natural Resources will decide if commercial treatment technology is
available to enable oceangoing ships to meet limits on living organisms
in discharged ballast water.
If the technology is available, those
ships would have to meet limits 100 times more restrictive than the
International Maritime Organization's standards. If the technology isn't
feasible, the state's standards will revert to the IMO's limits.
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