WASHINGTON: The Halifax Port Authority has grabbed top marks from Green Marine for its efforts to be friendly to the environment. A voluntary marine industry initiative, Green Marine has a goal of achieving levels of environmental performance that are better than the regulatory requirements in areas such as air emissions, greenhouse gases, cargo waste management, noise, dust, odors and light, water and land pollution prevention and environmental leadership. There are currently more than 100 ship owners, port authorities, terminals and shipyards from coast-to-coast, in Canada and the United States, participating in the program.
The Halifax authority has achieved Level 5 ratings in four categories which reflects excellence and leadership. The four categories are greenhouse gases, spill prevention, community impacts and environmental leadership. “The Level 5 rating in greenhouse gases is for implementing infrastructure upgrades that will continue to reduce air emissions from port authority activities, either on a large or small scale,” HPA’s Lane Farguson said in an email.
“The Level 5 rating in spill prevention is for the completion of an oil/water separator installation program for the authority’s most vulnerable areas and (the addition of) shore power contributes toward greenhouse gas emission reductions.” Farguson said the port’s goal is to be an industry leader in environmental best practices. “We will continue to research and implement new technologies that will allow us to make our port greener.” Green Marine spokeswoman Manon Lanthier said in an email Halifax has achieved an excellent report.
“Only two other participants have achieved Level 5 across the board for all indicators. They are reaching the highest levels of certification in our program. Our scale goes from 1 to 5 where 1 represents monitoring the regulations and 5 equals leadership and excellence,” she said. The Green Marine program has tripled the number of participants since its inception in 2007. There are currently 103 participants compared to 34 when the program started.
