26 



take it to a sorting station. And on some ships there are mini-incin- 

 erators located throughout the ship. On others, there is just one in- 

 cinerator down in the bottom. 



Mr. Tauzin. Is there any practice aboard cruise lines for separa- 

 tion of garbage in compartments the way homeowners separate 

 garbage and recycle it? 



Mr. Estes. Yes. Yes, there is. It takes 100 percent cooperation, 

 both passenger and crew. Right. And there is. We have cans, both 

 in the public areas and in the private areas to ask people to sepa- 

 rate, but it still has to be monitored. It is not good enough to just 

 ask them to help. 



Mr. Tauzin. Mr. Estes, I must confess that your first concern is 

 one I think that is real. You have got a hard time convincing us in 

 the face of what we have been seeing that the efforts are as sub- 

 stantial as we would hope they would be, and I hope, frankly, that 

 the public attention given this incident pushes the cruise lines to 

 greater compliance. We can't put a cop on every beat in the oceans. 

 We can't put a Coast Guardsman aboard every ship to watch it 24 

 hours a day. We shouldn't have to. 



It is the hope that this hearing will impress your industry with 

 this committee's concern that if as we go along in oversight we are 

 not satisfied that things are improving rapidly, that we may just 

 want to stiffen some fines and stiffen some enforcements, readily 

 accept some of the invitations to changes in the laws that have 

 been recommended to us today. 



Admiral Henn, I have got to yield to other members. If you 

 would quickly give me an explanation why it took eight months to 

 get going? WTiy did it take 18 months to bring this case to prosecu- 

 tion? 



Admiral Henn. Mr. Chairman, the Coast Guard had the case for 

 about nine months, which is about seven months too long in my 

 opinion, and the U.S. Attorney had it for the rest of the time. How- 

 ever, I am not passing the buck to the U.S. Attorney. He had a 

 whole bunch of things going on down there, including a hurricane, 

 and alien migration, so let us just focus on the Coast Guard prob- 

 lem, because that is really where the problem started. 



Obviously, the case was not handled the way it should have been. 

 It wasn't handled in an expeditious manner. Now, why not? Well, 

 the problem is I didn't have policy and guidance out to my 47 field 

 offices that the world had changed, and that MARPOL V was just 

 as hot an issue as other things we were doing such as OPA '90 im- 

 plementation, and passenger vessel safety. So I was the start of the 

 problem. I don't say that the field office handled it well, but, obvi- 

 ously, they were looking for guidance. Obviously, what Al per- 

 ceived as the field office muddling their way through this case was 

 true. I take responsibility for that, but having taken responsibility 

 for it, I want to tell you what I have done since then, and it goes 

 along with other enforcement actions, not just MARPOL V, but I 

 will focus just on MARPOL V. 



Since that time, we have provided guidance in the form of seven 

 messages to our field offices on how to enforce MARPOL V. We 

 provided guidance in our Marine Safety Manual. I personally sent 

 staff out to 21 of my 47 offices, and we will get to the rest of them 

 to see that they do understand the messages, know what the policy 



