Cruise Ship In Charleston

Comments by Dana Beach

Charleston has an enviable and hard-earned reputation for preserving its history, its environment and its quality of life. The issues before us tonight have the prospect of either reinforcing those successes, or undermining the hard work that so many people and organizations have labored over for decades.

These issues – Calhoun Street, Ansonborough Field, the market, and cruise ships - are, of course, cumulative and interrelated. I would like to focus on the newest of the four challenges that face this side of the city - cruise ships and the redevelopment of Union Pier.This picture was taken Monday of the Celebrity Mercury and shows the enormous scale of these ships against the city.

  1. We all need to understand that cruise ships can and do have substantially negative impacts on the environment and the cities they visit. These include a decline in quality of life for existing residents and land-based tourists, manifest in
  2. additional noise from PA systems, horns, engines and passengers,
  3. air pollution and water pollution, as this slide of the Celebrity Mercury, leaving, indicates,
  4. visual blight from ships towering over and dominating historic, human-scale skylines. It is important to note the differences in scale between cities like New York and Charleston,
  5. increased congestion and street closures from pulses of pedestrians and cars and,
  6. reduced quality of tourist engagement with the city, due to the “hit and run” nature of visitors who stay only for a few hours.
  7. The cruise industry has a poor record of environmental compliance and sensitivity to local concerns and Carnival and Celebrity have particularly bad records.
  8. In 2009, thirty-nine Celebrity and Carnival Cruise line ships were cited for environmental violations around the country. In November 2006, the Mercury, for example, was fined $100,000 for dumping 500,000 gallons of untreated wastewater into Puget Sound.
  9. In 2002 Carnival Cruise Lines was fined $18 million for dumping oily waste from five ships and falsifying entries in log books.
  10. We can immediately dismiss the idea that national regulations will protect Charleston from these and other abuses. The cruise industry has aggressively opposed federal standards for garbage and waste disposal, spending almost 6 million dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions in 2009. Consequently, only minor changes have been made to federal regulations that are decades old.
  11. Because of this, cities and states have adopted their own standards. These include Monterey, CA, the states of Maine, Florida, Alaska, California and many others. Charleston must do the same.

We have developed a set of recommendations that, if adopted, would go a long way toward protecting the integrity of the city and its natural environment. They are available in a handout at the door and are on our web site,

First, to deal with traffic congestion the city should deploy a combination of park and ride lots, shuttle bus service, a ban on cruise passenger parking near the terminal, street realignment, serious enforcement of existing anti-idling ordinances, and carriage management, all driven by a comprehensive, integrated analysis of the impacts of changes to Calhoun Street, Ansonborough Field, the market and the cruise terminal.

Beyond a certain volume, congestion can’t be managed. With that in mind, the city and SPA should limit by statute and easement the number of berths to one, the number of ships that can call on Charleston in a given year, and the size of the ships and height of the ships.

The city and the SPA must take steps to protect air and water, by banning sewage discharges within 12 miles of the port, requiring reporting of spills, requiring clean fuels to be used within 12 miles of the port, and by requiring ships to plug-in to shore-side electricity to avoid ship idling. Also consistent with the goals of Charleston’s proposed green plan, the city should provide and require the use of garbage and waste recycling and disposal facilities.

Finally, the economic burden of mitigation should be placed entirely on the cruise lines. They are extremely profitable businesses and it makes no sense for Charleston or the SPA to subsidize their operations here.

We believe that the City of Charleston should lead the nation in adopting the highest standards for the industry to insure that the excellence that has come to characterize the city is not compromised by an industry that will contribute only marginally to the economy. No one should be lulled into believing that these challenges will be met without hard work and, frankly, without some disagreement and conflict. But as my friend Rutledge Young likes to say, the beauty of Charleston is that every little change becomes a major debate, and in that, better decisions are made. Let’s get on with it. And thanks again.