EPA's Vessel General Permit and Small Vessel General

� Conduct outreach to the states to raise awareness about small vessel requirements; EPA
will encourage States to check records of quarterly self-inspection records and visible
portions of the hull while inspecting vessels when implementing their own programs.
� Develop trainings covering the small vessel requirements and share these with the Coast
Guard and States
The EPA will provide the Services with a yearly summary of the number of inspections (by
EPA, the Coast Guard, States or other sources) and results (including number of inspections by
type of vessel, location when available, and number and type of deficiencies). During a Senior
Manager’s Meeting (October 19, 2012), EPA assured the Services that a subset of small vessels
would be inspected.
Monitoring of Stressors (ANS and Pollutants)
Annually, EPA will summarize data from Annual Reports (which include all instances of
noncompliance and unavoidable discharges authorized by the VGP) and Discharge Monitoring
Reports and provide this summary to the Services. The Discharge Monitoring Reports include:
� Ballast water treatment system testing results, including results from:
o Functionality monitoring (at least monthly)
o Calibration tests (annually, at a minimum).
o Biological organism monitoring (2 or 4 times annually, depending on system)
o Residual biocides (After initial monitoring, 2 or 4 times annually, depending on
system)
� Graywater from cruise ships (Quarterly, after initial monitoring)
o BOD, fecal coliform, suspended solids, pH, and total residual chlorine
o E. coli, total phosphorus, ammonia, nitrate/nitrite, and total Kjeldahl nitrogen
� Bilgewater (annual oil content monitoring, for new builds on or before December 19,
2013)
In addition, EPA has committed to the following:
Copper
Within 1 year of finalization of the VGPs, EPA will develop, in cooperation with the Services,
and implement a monitoring and reporting plan for copper. The plan will contain the following
elements:
1) EPA, with the technical assistance of the Services, will identify metrics for assessing
copper loadings to waters inhabited by ESA-listed species (i.e., using the number of ships
reporting copper hull treatments in eNOIs for particular areas as a proxy).
2) EPA will compile eNOI and annual report information regarding the number and type of
vessels that use copper-based anti-fouling hull coating and/or exhaust gas scrubbers, their
home port/most frequented US port, and US ports anticipated visiting during the permit
term.
3) Twice, once by December 2014 (to summarize eNOI data) and another before EPA
transmits the next draft VGP/sVGP to OMB for interagency review (to evaluate annual
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