EGCS discharge water risk and impact assessment
Resolution MEPC.1/Circ.899 gives coastal States and owners a common method for assessing the local impact of exhaust gas cleaning system discharge water.
MEPC.1/Circ.899, the 2022 Guidelines for risk and impact assessments of the discharge water from exhaust gas cleaning systems, was approved at MEPC 78 on 10 June 2022. It exists because coastal States were reaching different conclusions from the same evidence about the same discharge, and the resulting restriction patchwork had no common analytical basis.
The circular is the instrument a State uses to justify a local restriction, and it is the direct regulatory answer to the wash water debate that surrounds exhaust gas cleaning systems . It is guidance rather than a binding standard, so it constrains how an assessment is argued, not whether a State may act.
The full article will set out the assessment method, the receiving-water characteristics it asks a State to establish, the relationship to the section 10 discharge water criteria , the parallel work at the Sub-Committee on Pollution Prevention and Response, and the interaction with regional instruments in the Baltic and the Mediterranean.