News Room: SB 771: Vessels : Discharge Ban

State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who authored the California law prohibiting coastal dumping by cruise ships and other oceangoing vessels, praised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its announcement today that it is finalizing a rule to ban all sewage discharge from large ships in state waters along the California coast. read more ...

A federal rule banning ships from flushing their sewage into the sea within 3 miles of the California coast was approved Thursday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The prohibition, which will go into effect next month, means cruise and cargo ships will no longer be able to discharge treated or untreated effluent or gray water anywhere along the coast, a practice that regulators blame for spreading bacteria and disease in marine mammals, fish and people. The new rule will create the largest coastal no-sewage zone in the nation, covering the entire 1,624 mile coast from Mexico to Oregon 3 miles out into the ocean. It is expected to prevent the dumping of 22.5 million gallons annually of ship waste, a good portion of which has historically oozed into San Francisco Bay. read more ...

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who authored the California law prohibiting coastal dumping by cruise ships and other oceangoing vessels, praised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its announcement today that it has proposed to ban all sewage discharges from large ships in state waters the length of the California coast. read more ...

Cruise ships and large commercial ships will be banned from dumping any kind of sewage—even highly filtered wastewater—along California’s coast out to three miles from shore, under new rules from the Obama administration.

The rules, which are scheduled to be announced Wednesday at a news conference in San Francisco, give California among the strictest laws in the nation limiting pollution from large ships.

“This is going to cover the entire California coastline,” said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. “Oceangoing vessels should not consider our coastline a place for dumping sewage.”

In 2005, Simitian wrote a bill that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed banning sewage discharges in state waters from cruise ships and commercial ships larger than 300 gross tons.

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Sacramento - Senate President pro Tem Don Perata announced today that he has appointed State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) as Chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, with jurisdiction over environmental quality, air quality, integrated waste management, toxics, water quality, and hazardous waste. read more ...

SACRAMENTO – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced today that he has signed SB 771, by State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), a bill to protect California’s coast and ocean by prohibiting the rapidly growing commercial shipping industry from dumping harmful substances into California’s water and air. read more ...