On August 7th, Earth Island Institute and the Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters filed a motion with the courts seeking relief under the Administrative Procedures Act (writ of mandamus). The motion is an effort to force the ADEC Commissioner to make a ruling on the court remand. We understand the Commissioner will issue a decision by August 31, so no action is necessary at this point.

ADEC is still working on the new draft 401 certification to the EPA Vessel General Permit. The ADEC Division on Water Director said they would be releasing the new draft by the end of the month. The release will be followed by a public comment period. Once the new draft is released, we will work with our member lines to review the conditions and submit public comments, as needed.

The ADEC science panel held a teleconference on July 26, 2012. The meeting was intended to cover the industry wastewater treatment surveys recently received, the status of the Best Available Technology (BAT) review, and the status and timeline of the final report. Most of the meeting was spent discussing the survey responses received from the industry. The surveys covered current wastewater treatment, prevention, and control efforts including the effectiveness and the cost of those efforts. Responses were received from 17 ships. The facilitator of the meeting walked through one of the responses (MS Westerdam) to highlight the type of information that was provided. ADEC and the facilitator indicated numerous times how much information was received and how pleased they were with the detail. The panel members definitely reflected the positive sentiment as well. The panel discussed information such as operations and

The State of Alaska decided to conduct a preliminary harbor seal research project in Tracy Arm this summer for the purposes of testing new GPS technology and collecting data that will help them develop better research parameters for next year’s harbor seal research program. The instruments stored the seal’s GPS locations, along with detailed haul-out and dive behavior. Two of the three tags also transmitted summarized data via ARGOS satellites. Tags were temporarily glued to the seals’ fur, and then fell off when the seals shed their fur during their annual molt. As of July 14, the State of Alaska recovered all three tags and are now in the process of analyzing the data. The results of the analyses will be used to assess the extent to which the objectives