Good international environment news from the Bush White House: US Support for Environmental Clean Up Efforts in the Caribbean Region - President Bush has asked the US Senate to ratify the "Protocol Concerning Pollution from Land-Based Sources and Activities to the Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region"
"It is estimated that 70 to 90 percent of pollution entering the marine environment emanates from land-based sources and activities. Among the principal land-based sources of marine pollution in the Caribbean are domestic wastewater and agricultural nonpoint source runoff. Such pollution contributes to the degradation of coral reefs and commercial fisheries, negatively affects regional economies, and endangers public health, recreation, and tourism throughout the region."
The United States would be able to implement its obligations under the Protocol under existing statutory and regulatory authority.
The Protocol is the first regional agreement to establish effluent standards to protect one of our most valuable resources, the marine environment.
Implementation of the 1983 Cartagena Convention's 1999 Protocol on Pollution from Land-based Sources and Activities (LBS) has been hampered by US hesitation to ratify the Protocol. The LBS requires contracting parties to take regulatory steps to stem the damage done to the marine environment by land-based sources of pollution such
as wastewater discharges (particularly household sewage), agricultural non-point sources (pesticide and fertilizer runoff, etc.), oil refineries, pulp and paper factories, sugar refineries and distilleries, mining, chemical plant discharges and effluent from food and drink (particularly beer) processing plants. Two specific annexes to the Protocol set out regional limits for domestic wastewater discharges (total suspended solids, biochemical oxygen demand, pH, fats, oils and greases) and a timetable for implementing them, and a third calls for national action plans on agricultural non-point sources.
It should be pointed that just because the President asks the Senate to ratify does not mean that the Senate will do so. The Senate has been known to sit on Presidentially endorsed agreements for years or never to bring them to a ratification vote.