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Coast Guard Regulations

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On a beautiful sunny afternoon in the middle of July, a young man decides to take the Badger Ferry to Wisconsin. He loads up a car and collects his family on what should be a splendid trip. Upon arrival to the Badger the car drives into the stern parking compartment and from there the young family heads up to the main deck. Soon enough the Badger gets underway and clears sight of land in just a few hours. Suddenly, thick black fog covers the deck; the family disappears in the hazy twilight, each of them gasping for air. Fortunately the fog disappears as quickly as it appeared and the sunshine again shimmers on the deck. In just moments the passengers realize the fog comes from the spewing smoke stack of the Badger. A sudden wind shift forced …show more content…

The Coast Guard regulations outline equipment and procedures to reduce unnecessary bulk cargo from spilling (USCG). Though these regulations aim at preventing avoidable cargo spills; accidents out of a crew's control can happen. Sometimes a ship in rough water loses part of its cargo as a wave sweeps across an open cargo hold. Others times a ship offloading misses the dock machinery collecting the cargo and some of the cargo spills into the water. Vis versa a ship loading floats away from the dock (because a mooring line breaks) or rocks do to wave action, causing a fuel line to snap. On the other hand a majority of cargo and fuel dumping occurs on purpose. Ships on the Great Lakes cannot allow their dry cargos to mix so the Coast Guard created a policy where a ship's deck must be ‘broom clean’, meaning any cargo remaining on deck after an on/offload considered safe gets washed off the deck (USCG). The Coast Guard believes the practice meets all environmental standards and their intentions mean well, but to no avail. The let down on this practice lies with the shipping companies who take advantage of the Coast Guard. The companies dump toxic materials into the lakes including miscellaneous garbage thrown overboard by crew members and release dirty oil with little thought of consequence (USCG). The Coast Guard does not have the technology available to enforce the …show more content…

One resolution to the fuel pollution issue uses the idea of reinvention to curb the damage that smoke and fuel causes to the environment. A U.S. company, Sea Change LLC. paired with the Maine Maritime Academy to create a more friendly fuel (“1”). The engineering classes at the academy along with chemists created a fuel that burned cleaner and safer for the environment. The fuel used mirco-glycerol droplets mixed with ultra-low sulfur diesel to reduce harmful emissions and as a result found a reduction in smoke by 25 to 50 percent (“1”). In addition Nitrogen Oxide levels showed a reduction by 5 to 15 percent compared to regular low-sulfur diesel at equivalent horsepower (“1”). This hard work truly paid off big for these two entities and they showed that with some ingenuity safer ways of burning fuel just wait to be

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