I WRITE to express our concern over your coverage of a possible change to Orkney Islands Council's ballast water management policy for Scapa Flow (Fears for Scapa Flow as council lets foreign ships dump dirty water in bay, News, October 14).
We are currently considering a change in policy and no decision has been taken. Our current policy requires oil tankers taking part in ship-to-ship transfers of oil to leave Scapa Flow to discharge ballast water outside the harbour limits.
The headline and first paragraph of your article suggest the council has given the go-ahead to "foreign ships" to "dump dirty water into Scapa Flow". This is untrue, and it is far from accurate that "the council is proposing to allow them to dump seawater collected from all around the world in the bay". The option we have agreed as our preferred approach for further investigation would require tankers to exchange their ballast water in the North Sea while en route to Orkney, then discharge this exchanged ballast water within Scapa Flow. This would meet the International Maritime Organisation's (IMO) ballast water management convention, which is currently awaiting ratification.
In future, the same IMO convention will require tankers to have systems on board for the treatment of ballast water prior to discharge. The option we are considering would mean tankers additionally treating exchanged ballast water before discharge in to Scapa Flow, once this convention comes into force.
Orkney's environment is of huge importance to this council. The investigations we are commissioning will be carried out in consultation with statutory advisory agencies and others to enable a full and informed discussion by the council before a decision is taken.
Steven Heddle
Convener
Orkney Islands Council
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