Even China is moving forward on shore power. LA is well aware of the benefits. Some how we need to convince our mayor of the importance to his
citizens!
CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) – Click to view the footage from Live5 News
Mayor Joe Riley and other Charleston City officials heard from the public Thursday as the City tackles revising its tourism management plan for the first time in 16 years.
The tourism management plan was established in 1978 and last updated in 1998. City officials say they are working towards presenting a revision by the end of the year. Many say it’s long overdue.
“I feel more and more like we’re a revolving door for tourists,” says downtown resident Carrie Agnew.
Traffic on the peninsula, cruise ships and enforcement of existing tourism ordinances were among the key concerns at Thursday’s public forum.
Mayor Joe Riley says ordinances need to be updated to reflect the city and preserve quality of life.
“The first responsibility of a government and the first goal of a city have to be a good place for people to live first…a good place for people to work and then a good place for people to visit.”
Some residents say they appreciate that Charleston is a top vacation destination, but they fear livability has taken a back seat to tourism. Agnew, who has lived downtown for several years, says she plans around the cruise schedule.
“I know when a cruise ship is going to be here so that I can avoid certain areas. I know which streets are going to be hard to get down.”
Agnew, along with others, says they left feeling optimistic that change will come sooner than later.
“There needs to be a lot of involvement with people who are actually benefiting from tourism and are able and capable of handling most of the issues being brought up,” says business owner Walter Thorn.
City officials say the next step is for five task forces to talk and work through the suggestions they received from residents about two months ago.
To Whom It May Concern:
To add to the public record of residents on the issue of tourism and its impact on residential neighborhoods, I would like to make the following statements:
As a friend who would like to remain anonymous has so aptly put it to me, “ The resident in Charleston has become an endangered species. As such, they should be afforded the protections due to an endangered species.” I couldn’t agree more.
The concept of living a life of quiet enjoyment, not the legally deeded kind but the physical kind, has just simply gone missing in downtown Charleston. At any gathering of residents of the neighborhoods, there is always a review of the latest trespass by tourists or college students. I personally would hate to have to count the number of times my dog has stopped to inspect vomit or I have stepped in it in the Harleston Village area. Livability Court and the willingness to cite violators is the only thing that makes living in a college area a possibility. In other neighborhoods, residents have viewed tourists relieving themselves in their driveways, even on their rose bushes. People have had their doors knocked upon followed by inquiries to use the facilities or view their garden. Are we on display like show animals. If so, I’d like to have the city pay for my costumes. I’m fond of Armani.
There are several issues at the top of my list.
1. What possible benefit could be afforded residents by putting a cruise terminal with 900 flat surface parking spaces in the residential neighborhoods. The first thing the city could do to prove that it had an interest in the well-being of the residents would be to get that terminal and its fall-out vehicle congestion, people traffic congestion and parking issues out of the residential areas. It cannot be justified and it is foolishness to not accommodate the people and cars elsewhere and transport those tourists to their destination by public transport. The revenue will still be there, the tourists and their cars won’t be. To not do this indicates to the residents that the city administration just doesn’t care about those of us who have no alternative but to use those streets.
2. Shore power. How can a city that has signs outside of schools stating that you should not idle your vehicle because students breathe there, allow ships to idle in port with no shore power.
These first 2 are no-brainers. There is no justification for having the terminal where it is planned to be. There is no reason to add the burden of poor air-quality to the other congestion related quality-of-life issues currently challenging the peace and quiet of those residing on the Charleston peninsula.
Why would anyone take prime real estate and plan a 900 space flat surface parking lot?What a stupid use of tax dollars and space. Wherever you decide to put a 900 space flat surface parking lot in the year 2014, it should at least incorporate solar so that the residents of whatever neighborhood you place it in will have an energy break for their troubles. Other countries have managed this. Why can’t we?
If you’re going to put something massive in a space so prominent, why not make it world class…think Sydney Opera House. There is a glorious bridge already in place, a world class facility could be placed where the terminal is slated to be. You could put solar over the parking lot and a park on top of the building. Get out of the box and really go for it if you’re going to mess around with the neighborhoods and put something there that everyone can enjoy, not just a tourist bringing a car down so they can get on a ship and go somewhere else.
3. Could we please have a moratorium on building for the hotels and office buildings over 3 stories that have already been approved until we can adopt a set of guidelines for the next 20 years that isn’t based on the last 20 years. When you put a building up that is over 3 stories, and then you do it again and again and again, you have no idea how much you are limiting the light and the visual vista that create a town that feels manageable rather than a city. Go to Charlotte if you want to see a small city. People do not come to Charleston to experience a small city. They come to enjoy, among other things, a historic city with beautiful architecture. The pitiful nature of the ugly architecture that has risen around the city in the last few years is unforgivable. If you’re going to do something, at least try to get it right. I actually sat through a City Council meeting in which a decision that was being requested for a large building was referred to by the presenter as ‘non-precedent setting’. Please. Think about that.
4. Clearly the silo effect of planning events and tourism has to change. Someone must coordinate it all and make it work for the residents, not just visitors.
5. Try to pay a little attention to the residents of the city and their specific needs. A friend of mine owns a car that was hit by someone and a witness left a note including a license plate number for the car that did the damage. As of 6 weeks later, and many calls to the police, the issue had not even been investigated. The police were ‘too busy’. As Giuliani stated so many times as he cleaned up New York, “Its the little things that count.”
6. Public toilets in residential neighborhoods. When I travel, I plan accordingly and don’t expect there to be a public restroom at my disposal. There could be signs that say that “You are entering a residential neighborhood. There are no public restrooms, plan accordingly.” That doesn’t seem so hard now, does it?
Thank you for your time.
Leslie Scanlan
Please click on the header below to see the video footage from this Anderson Cooper exclusive!
Could Carnival have avoided the Triumph cruise nightmare?
It was the vacation from hell for thousands of passengers stuck on-board the Carnival Triumph. A fire knocked out the ship’s power, which meant no air conditioning, no lights, little food and water… and no flushing toilets. Conditions were so bad it was nicknamed “The Poop Cruise.” Now CNN has learned that the ship set sail with only four of six generators operating and knew of a generator fire hazard across its fleet of ships. Investigative Correspondent Drew Griffin is Keeping Them Honest.
Clearing the air
Commendations are due the State Ports Authority and its CEO, Jim Newsome, for supporting removal of unhealthy air pollution from trucks at the SPA docks by promoting more eco-friendly trucks that haul cargo to and from its terminals. Incentives are given for short-haul drivers who travel back and forth from SPA terminals.
And the SPA’s new Clean Truck Certification Program requires trucks serving the container yards to be equipped with engines manufactured in 1994 or later. As a result, 84 trucks were replaced with more efficient ones at a cost of $1 million paid with support from the SPA and state. The goal was reduced diesel air pollution.
However, my commendation is tempered by the SPA’s refusal to require shore power for cruise ships which berth at Union Pier, right next to neighborhoods, causing far more air pollution than those trucks.
Why is the SPA not installing shore power to protect the health of Charleston residents and visitors?
And for shame that the City of Charleston is not requiring shore power for the same reasons. Why are Mayor Joe Riley and City Council not supporting shore power?
J. Kirkland Grant
Mary Street
Charleston
Sink or Swim, taken from Charleston City Paper
contribution by Katie Zimmerman
The latest column from Charleston City Paper columnist Bryan Crabtree on cruise ships included suggestions in line with those put forth by numerous locals and organizations representing them, including the Coastal Conservation League.
Most people in Charleston seek a good balance whereby cruises can continue, but with standards in place to protect the health of local families and our environment as well as the strength of our economy, which relies greatly on protecting historic assets.
The drive to establish standards for cruise operations in historic cities is happening not just in Charleston. Venice, Italy, Key West, Fla., Dubrovnik, Croatia, and others are wrestling with the same concerns. Given the unprecedentedly large scale of the cruise ships and the thousands of people cruise operations bring into small, densely populated areas, it’s imperative that communities such as Charleston hasten to protect unique historic sites via enforceable standards for cruise ships, just as we support standards for other things, from tour buses to horse carriages.
It is beyond odd that cruise operations are seemingly the one business exempt from standards. This may reflect the cruise industry’s success in avoiding other rules and requirements. For example, Carnival Cruise Lines — which has had a cruise ship in operation in Charleston since 2010 — pays no taxes here and doesn’t even have a business license. Why should a highly profitable company like Carnival, which is incorporated in Panama, not have to abide by standards that apply to everyone else in Charleston?
Conservation groups, including the Coastal Conservation League, agree with Mr. Crabtree that Charleston cruise ships should use shore power to reduce the impact of concentrated diesel soot pollution on local families. Cruise ships do this in other ports even when the law doesn’t require it.
The League has also asked that records of cruise discharges be made available for public review. But when we asked Carnival if the company would consider notifying local citizens of what they are dumping in the water, a League representative was told that it was “frankly none of [our] business what Carnival does in [South Carolina’s] waterways.”
Neither the League nor anyone else is asking for limits on cargo ships since they don’t emit nearly as much pollution as a cruise ship, and they don’t bring thousands of cars and passengers into a gridlocked historic district. Like Mr. Crabtree, we support looking at alternative locations for a cruise terminal, an inquiry that so far has been stifled by the State Ports Authority.
People are tired of an all-or-nothing debate about cruise ships. They want solutions and options for achieving a healthy balance. The League has been pushing for those options for several years, but so far the proponents of unregulated cruise operations have acted as if engaging with loyal citizens is akin to dealing with terrorists.
So long as those pushing unmitigated cruise operations take an our-way-or-the-highway approach, Charlestonians — conservative and otherwise — will continue to feel frustrated and continue to ask that other options be explored.
Mr. Crabtree is to be applauded for proposing one option, and we stand ready to engage with him and any other interested persons in reaching a solution that works for everyone. As he should know, the question for our community is not the one he asked in conducting his informal poll on social media. On his Facebook page, he asked his followers if we should “allow the cruise industry to grow in Charleston or push them away?” The real question is whether or not cruise operations, like every other business here, should abide by limits and standards and find a healthy balance.
We applaud Mr. Crabtree’s call for examining alternative methods of basing very large cruise ships in the most congested and historic part of our entire region. There is no sense in polarizing people when most folks have coalesced around this reasonable middle ground.
Katie Zimmerman is the Coastal Conservation League’s director of the Air, Water, and Public Health Program. Her areas of expertise include environmental justice, community empowerment, and water quality.
Well said Pat! We couldn’t agree more!
Cruise insights I recently had the good fortune to visit two historic port cities: Athens, Greece, and Istanbul, Turkey. The experience showed me that it is quite possible to dock passenger as well as cargo ships at the same location — away from the historic districts — without detracting from the cruise or the historic district. The historic district in Athens was a 30-minute cab ride from the port in Piraeus, and the historic area in Istanbul was another easy cab ride from the docks. My friends and fellow passengers didn’t think twice about having to travel a short distance from the docks to the historic districts. In fact, we were relieved to find that these valuable and irreplaceable historic cities were protected from the aesthetic and environmental effects that we are not protected from in Charleston. My experience cruising to globally important historic ports only reinforces that we should not park cruise ships in front of our own historic port city. A visit to historic Charleston is worth a short cab or trolley ride from a more remote terminal location.
Pat Sullivan Plantation Court Mount Pleasant
Dear People,
You do well to be concerned about cruise ships in Charleston. I lived in St. Thomas for 27 years and watched the development and growth of the Cruise Ship Industry down there up to and including the point where the entire island was Cruise Ship dependent.
The Cruise Ship Industry is parasitic–not symbiotic. They devastated St. Thomas in many areas–the hotel industry, the local restaurants (back on board before dinner and a bag lunch provided for those who debarked) and the local businesses.
On St. Thomas the progression of the relationship with the onshore businesses began with backroom deals with some stores where the ships promised to steer traffic (via deals made with the Taxi Assoc.) to their stores and not others. Money changing hands off the record.
I sold handmade seed jewelry at a lookout in St. Thomas for 20 years. The cruise ships promised the Botanical Gardens gift shops to take passengers to them and bypass the local vendors (that’s me–and others) selling at the Drake’s Seat lookout. But not all the taxi men were complicit–small islands breed personal relationships and the vendors had longstanding relationships with many of the drivers–and others, bless their hearts, just didn’t like to be told what to do and were sympathetic to our plight.
The ships (via the St. Thomas Taxi Assoc.) then sent a man to sit up at Drake’s Seat and take the license numbers of all taxis that stopped there informing them they wouldn’t be allowed to ferry cruise ship passengers unless they cooperated. Since the cruise ships by then were the mainstay of the economy the threat had clout.
In the end we lost about 60% of our trade–which still speaks well for the brave 40% that couldn’t be bullied. Anyway it did the local businesses no good in the end. (I had to go looking for part-time work to supplement my income–others just went under.
Last time I visited St. Thomas I heard from more than one tourist that Carnival Lines was telling them not to buy ANYTHING on shore–that they could beat any onshore price right on the boat….well really!!!
In short, in case you haven’t gotten the message already, the cruise ships are rapacious and seeking as much of a monopoly as possible over the tourist dollars they are ferrying around. They’re not into sharing and care not a damn about the welfare of the local populations where they dock.
I’m very glad your group is in place to keep an eye on them. Perhaps my experience may prompt you to include certain up-till-now not considered clauses in your limitations of how they behave in Charleston.
Thank you for your concern and work
All best wishes,
Eve Herbst
Study: On-shore power would dramatically reduce cruise ship emissions
‘Waiter, there’s small particulate soot in my soup’
Posted by Paul Bowers on Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 4:00 AM
- Mike Ledford file photo
A new study shows that cruise ships docked in Charleston could reduce their carbon monoxide emissions by as much as 97 percent by plugging into the onshore power grid instead of idling their engines.
The report is fodder for an ongoing debate about the future of the Holy City cruise ship industry, sparked by the S.C. State Ports Authority’s plan to build a new $35 million cruise terminal in the historic district and by city leaders’ refusal to enforce caps on cruise ship traffic. Environmental and community groups have filed lawsuits in the matter and pushed SPA to consider incorporating power grid plug-ins in the new terminal design, as has been done at seven other U.S. ports including one in Brooklyn, N.Y., but SPA has refused to make the change. As a result, cruise ships will continue to run their engines at the Charleston port to power lights, air conditioners, refrigerators, and other equipment. In the new study, which was published Monday, these onshore electrical needs are referred to as the “hotelling load factor.”
The study, published Monday, was commissioned by the Charleston-based Southern Environmental Law Center and prepared by the Pittsford, N.Y.-based Energy and Environmental Research Associates, LLC. In estimating emissions, it used methodologies similar to ones used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board.
Under current conditions, according to the report, a switch to onshore power would reduce emissions of carbon monoxide by 92 percent, nitrogen oxide by 98 percent, small particulate soot by 34 percent, and carbon dioxide by 26 percent. The study found that a 2,000-passenger Carnival ship emits 68.3 metric tons of nitrogen oxide per year in the time it idles at the Charleston terminal, whereas the same ship using shore-based power would emit only 0.8 metric tons in Charleston.
The study also looks forward to the year 2019, when Carnival will be operating larger 3,500-passenger ships that are expected to emit more pollutants. By then, the South Carolina utility SCE&G is also expected to have shifted toward natural gas and nuclear power generation, leading to lower emissions from the currently coal-based onshore power source. As a result, the study finds that the emissions cuts from switching to on-shore power would be even more dramatic in 2019: Carbon monoxide emissions would be reduced by 97 percent, nitrogen oxide by 99 percent, small particulate soot by 71 percent, and carbon dioxide by 36 percent.
SPA representative Allison Skipper says she has not seen the report yet, but that her organization “believes Carnival to be operating legally in Charleston” under federal MARPOL (Maritime Pollution) Annex VI emissions standards. Those standards, which went into effect in 2005, placed limits on ships’ emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide.
The Coastal Conservation League, a vocal proponent of onshore power for Charleston cruise ships, is touting the report as support for their side in the debate. “People in Charleston are not anti-cruise,” says Katie Zimmerman, a program manager at CCL. “They just want a fair look at options used in other ports to manage cruise impacts and protect human health, and shore power is one of them.”
Thew new technology to reduce air emissions sounds great in theory, BUT does it address the fact that the Carnival Fantasy would not be one of the ships to which they will add the scrubbers – so looks like our harbor will still be victim to nasty fuel and residue!
As taken from Charleston’s Post and Courier on September 8th:
Carnival Cruise Lines’ announcement last week that it plans to install new technology to reduce air emissions on 30 of its ships means more to its shareholders than it does to the people of Charleston who are concerned about dangerous pollutants. The company will install scrubbers to cut sulfur oxide emissions and filters to capture soot. It is cheaper than and expected to be as effective as using federally mandated cleaner fuel, according to the EPA.
And it still leaves Charleston in need of plug-in power for cruise ships while they are docked here.
When Carnival’s Fantasy is at dock for debarkation and embarkation, it continues to idle so that the air conditioning and lights will be operational. While it idles, it emits particulate matter. Even using the cleaner fuel that federal regulations will soon require, emissions would be a problem.
The Port of Long Beach, Calif., (which is switching to shore power) estimates shutting down auxiliary engines for a day is the equivalent of taking 33,000 cars off the road. That’s not good enough. Other ports have installed shoreside power and required cruise ships to use it. It has worked, and Charleston deserves no less.
As a matter of fact, it’s of particular concern here because the port is adjacent to dense residential areas, often crowded with visitors. Those kinds of emissions have been connected to lung disease, heart disease and cancer. Both the Charleston and the South Carolina medical associations have called for shoreside power. The health risk is one reason preservationists, neighborhood associations and environmentalists have sued Carnival. Other reasons are the ship’s impact on congestion as thousands of passengers come and go, noise from loudspeakers, and its visually overwhelming profile.
Soot also has been a major complaint. Maybe the new scrubbers will ease that problem. But altogether, the fear is that the city’s important heritage tourism will be diminished. Opponents haven’t asked that cruise ships be banned, only that they agree to reasonable, enforceable limitations as to the size of the ships, the number of passengers they hold and the frequency of visits here. The city of Charleston has failed to go along.
The port has made some strides in addressing air pollution. For example, it has implemented a program to provide financial incentives to encourage truckers to replace their old diesel rigs with more fuel-efficient trucks. Plug-in electrical power is another effort that the port could make that would improve the livability and the health of its neighbors.