15 



Captain Donohoe. It is on the front burner. It is something I am 

 involved in personally, and we are hopeful we will have it finished 

 soon. As soon as it is approved by the Administration, it will be on 

 its way. 



Mr. Manton. Thank you. 



Mr. Shupp, perhaps you C£in give us a New York perspective, 

 New York is obviously one of the Great Lakes States and we have 

 been dealing with this problem for some time now. Can we go it 

 alone there? 



Mr. Shupp. Certainly not. There is no way to go it alone. By 

 going it alone, do you mean control or prevention? 



Mr. Manton. Both. 



Mr. Shupp. Neither. 



Mr. Manton. Neither? 



Mr. Shupp. Neither. The system is too vast to go it alone and 

 there is no technology for most of the control now. And as far as 

 prevention, we see the Coast Guard as the way to go with that. 



Mr. Manton. Which critter is the most damaging? I know in 

 your testimony you made reference to several. 



Mr. Shupp. That is pretty speculative, which is most damaging. 

 This decade or two decades down the road may be hard to predict. 



If the zebra mussel productivity shifts are £is dire as they may 

 become, that certainly could be the most devastating for Lake Erie, 

 for example. Also, again, if ruffe invades Lake Erie, the shift in 

 species composition that that causes could be very significant. So it 

 is a very difficult call. 



If one takes place a decade before the other, the second one may 

 not have an impact, so it is a hard one to say, Mr. Manton. 



Mr. Manton. For anybody on the panel. At this point in time 

 are there any ballast water treatment technologies readily avail- 

 able to vessel operators? 



Mr. Carlton. I can say a few words about that, Mr. Chairman. 



The nationally-internationally accepted technology is water ex- 

 change, which is to try to get rid of one's original water out in the 

 mid ocean and high seas and then ballast up water from that site. 

 By putting that water into the coastal zone, one has attempted to 

 get rid of most of the original life. 



That has been the operational choice because it falls within the 

 ability of most ships to do that anjnvay when it is safe to do so. 

 Beyond that, every individual ship may have some capabilities to 

 do something slightly different. Some ships may have the ability to 

 heat the water, for example, which would be rather rare. 



Most of the remaining technologies are those that we have stud- 

 ied on paper but which have not yet been demonstrated. So that if 

 we were to attempt to install a water filtration plant inside a ship, 

 since there is no room inside a ship to do that, that is daunting as 

 a first step. 



To try ultrasonics, ultraviolet, any number of t3rpes of treatments 

 require ship retrofitting, perhaps computer modeling studies, rede- 

 sign, at the basic level, when the ship is built. 



So, about a half dozen, perhaps as many as a dozen management 

 technologies have been identified beyond ballast exchange. These 

 now require field testing and, actually, getting some ships and 

 going ahead and trying out some of these things. 



