Environment

Cruise Ship Pollution Reduced

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published December 10, 2010 at 4:44 PM PST

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

Cruise ships that dock at the Embarcadero in downtown San Diego are now able to turn off their engines while in port, and plug into power on shore. San Diego is the second port in California to install a system that radically cuts pollution from cruise ships.

More than 220 cruise ships pulled into San Diego Bay last year, and spent several hours moored at the Embarcadero downtown.

David Merk of the Port says they used to have to keep their engines running in order to keep the lights on.

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"We estimate that a ton of air emissions are discharged by a cruise ship every time that it pulls in to San Diego," he said. "So this allows us to have them operated by electricity rather than by their normal power source."

Plugging in to electricity on shore is called "cold ironing." The system cost the Port $7 million, but part of that was covered by a state grant of more than $2 million.

By 2014, all cruise lines will have to use shore power for at least 50 percent of their ports of call.

Environment

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.