While the Port of Seattle can’t force cruise companies to keep the voluntary discharge pause in place, we need to make sure they know we expect them to do everything in their power to keep the agreement going, to protect our waters, marine life, fisheries, and public health.

This is an industry-funded study designed to produce a predetermined result. Cruise companies are likely to use it to justify backing out of the scrubber discharge pause so they can go back to burning cheap fuel and dumping toxic waste into the Salish Sea.

Carnival Cruise financed a report claiming to show that scrubber discharge has no impact on the marine environment of Puget Sound!

Four years ago, the main cruise companies that come to Seattle agreed to "pause" their discharge of scrubber waste into Puget Sound, until a local study could be done.

Scrubbers turn air pollution into water pollution by using millions of gallons of seawater to "scrub" ship's exhaust of pollutants, then dumping the now-polluted water back into the ocean. A huge body of recent scientific studies show how toxic and harmful scrubber waste is.