Page 30: of Marine News Magazine (November 2025)

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Feature

Ballast Water Management Systems “O “Our test conditions “With differing are probably the requirements in most dif? cult test both countries, conditions in the our seafarers w world, and no BWMS receive con? icting that’s commercially compliance directives available has been from regulators and proved to work.” inspectors, resulting in uncertainty, costly delays, and confusion.” – James Weakley, – Jason Card,

President of the Lake Carriers’

Association (LCA) Director of Communications, at Canada’s CMC for an industry that needs certainty to effectively plan opera- tions and manage costs. Full alignment between Canada and the US from a regulatory perspective would reduce challenges and uncertainty for all players. “Canadian shipowners have had to adopt ballast water sys- tems to comply with Transport Canada regulations and in do- ing so have incurred millions in capital and operational costs to install and maintain equipment that was not designed for the conditions in which they operate. To date, US shipowners have not been made subject to such complication and expense.”

Transport Canada says its ballast water regulations, pub- lished in June 2021, currently remain in full effect. These reg- ulations require vessels built before January 1, 2009, to install a BWMS by September 8, 2030, while vessels built after Janu- ary 1, 2009, must comply by September 8, 2024. The cut-off date was chosen to align with US Environmental Protection

Agency rules introduced in 2013 under the Clean Water Act.

Transport Canada says the regulations consider domestic operating realities such as the logistical and technical chal- lenges of installing BWMS across a large ? eet in a short time- frame, especially for older vessels designed prior to the ballast water management era. As such, vessels operating exclusively in Canadian waters and the Great Lakes were provided with extended timelines for compliance. In certain cases, Cana- dian and US vessels have been granted time-limited exten- sions or exemptions due to supply chain issues related to the pandemic and limited drydock capacity. 30 | MN November 2025