How Do Cruise Ships Handle Sewage
Each person on a cruise uses 40-50 gallons of water per day.
How do cruise ships handle sewage. As the Palm Beach Post points out cruise ships alone dumped more than one. As a result all of those millions of passengers and crew members dining and defecating and showering on the oceans have left filthy discharges in their wake. Reverse-osmosis membranes filter out salt and evaporators use heat from the engine to boil off the fresh H 2 O.
Federal law requires that cruise ships only dump treated wastewater if they are within three nautical miles of shore. There are currently 646 crew members quarantined on the ship Princess Cruises says. This water is pumped into the sea.
Law allows cruise ships to dump raw sewage in the ocean once a ship is more than three miles off US. Yesterday the Friends of the Earth FOE filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington DC. The aeration chamber cleans the waste.
When a toilet is flushed on a cruise ship the sewage travels to the onboard treatment plant. Cruise ships like Symphony have a designated waste and recycling center. Thats not even counting the 50-plus other cruise ships sailing through Seattle next year Cruise Ship Sewage 2011 para 2.
Green brown and white. The way cruise ships handle effluent is covered by the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships MARPOL. Ships can dump treated sewage anywhere in the ocean except in Alaskan waters where companies must comply with higher state standards.
On some cruise ships especially many of those that travel in Alaskan waters sewage is treated using Advanced Wastewater Treatment AWT systems that generally provide improved screening treatment disinfection and sludge processing as compared with traditional MSDs marine sanitation devices. Here the waste is filtered before it enters an aeration chamber. As HERKIMER noted the sewage is treated on board.
