Uniform National Discharge Standards—Overview and Implications for Future Naval Engineering

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the Fiscal Year 1996 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to provide the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency authority to jointly establish standards for incidental discharges from Armed Forces' vessels. The uniform national standards would apply to discharges from vessels of the Navy, Military Sealift Command, Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard to the navigable waters and contiguous zone of the U.S. and its territories.Uniform National Discharge Standards (UNDS) will require control of discharges, by either a technology or management practice. UNDS will facilitate the Armed Forces' ability to better design and build future vessels to be environmentally sound and to maintain the operational flexibility of Armed Forces' vessels both domestically and internationally. The development of standards for Armed Forces' vessel discharges may have greater impact on naval engineering requirements for future vessels than any other single environmental issue. These standards are expected to stimulate the development of innovative vessel pollution control technologies, which can be used for both Armed Forces' vessels and commercial shipping vessels. This paper provides an overview of UNDS development, summarizes the results of UNDS Phase I, provides a summary overview of the preliminary approach for accomplishing UNDS Phase II, and discusses implications for future naval engineering efforts.