USA: Mobile Ballast Water Testing Facility Starts Operations

The Maritime Administration, along with the Maritime Environmental Resource Center and Maryland Port Administration, has dedicated a new facility to study the effectiveness of technology to treat invasive species in ballast water.

The Mobile Test Platform is a retrofitted barge that will allow ballast water treatment systems to be evaluated in a natural setting at different locations in the Chesapeake Bay region.

MARAD provided $1.2 million to help develop the new facility, which is able to test according to both IMO and US EPA Environmental Technology Verification protocols.

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Source: MARAD, October 7, 2011.