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Time to talk about the benefits, detriments of cruise ships
Consider this
a big, fat foghorn blast.
City
commissioners, business people, environmentalists and residents, it's
time to talk about cruise ships.
Port calls
have skyrocketed in recent years. The size of ships has ballooned. The
number of people touching down on Key West soil from those floating
behemoths has grown.
In 1994, we
had 476,432 passengers visit. Five years later, we had 630,856. Last
year we had 995,092.
That's roughly
a million people. A million likely will visit this year, barring any
catastrophes.
Business
people claim passengers pump $97 million into the economy.
But they also
pump 210,000 gallons of sewage into the ocean every week from just one
3,000 passenger ship, as well as 1 million gallons of soapy water from
showers and washing machines, 37,000 gallons of oily bilge water, 30,000
pounds of plastic trash, 8 tons of other garbage and air pollution equal
to 12,240 automobiles.
Cruise lines
promised the state they'd dump sewage no closer to shore than 12 miles.
That's from
Key West to the Saddlebunch Keys; from Marathon to Duck Key. It's twice
the distance from Key West shorelines to Sand Key; meaning no farther
past the reef than it is from the shore to the reef. And you can see the
Sand Key lighthouse from shore; that's not far.
Do we really
feel comfortable with the idea that about 20,000 passengers worth of
poop could be dumped just beyond the reef this week as 10 ships are
scheduled to dock here in Key West? (According to the city's schedule.)
While it's
unlikely they're all doing that, there's nothing but the good word of
the corporate lawyers that they're voluntarily dumping that far out.
Then there's
the impact of the tourists' presence on our 2-by-5-mile island.
Aggravation is
an impact; the sterilization of Key West's character is an impact; the
cheapening of our mystique by selling it for a $10.63 disembarkation fee
and $40 bar tab is an impact.
Most of the
time these visitors look more favorably on Key West than Key Westers do
on them.
But you gotta
give them credit for knowing a good thing when they see it. The city
severely limits the time cruise ships stay in city dockage. Some
passengers only see Key West between the hours of 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. Can
you fault them for barely having time to buy a T-shirt and a couple of
margaritas in souvenir cups before they need to get back on the cruise
ship?
Nonetheless,
those ships will manage to disgorge 20,000 people onto our docks this
week.
And the
industry is moving toward larger ships.
Some of those
gigantic ships already anchor out and ferry in passengers. The Navy's
dredging project that will deepen the channel into the harbor should
make it easier to bring in the big ships.
The cruise
industry has few restrictions on it. In fact, often city leaders talk
like we need to kow-tow to the big cruise companies because of the
business they bring us.
We believe not
enough people are benefiting to justify the thousands of passengers who
swarm out downtown every week. It's time to spread around the money and
impact.
Cruise
passenger fees may reduce city property taxes, but federal law requires
the spending of those fees to benefit the cruise passengers. And those
fees may not be enough.
Maybe have
fewer boats for longer stays. Maybe charge more money and earmark it for
programs city residents think can offset some of the impact, such as
parks or sidewalk improvements. Definitely push forward with plans to
require pump-outs, as the city commission is considering.
It's time to
talk about the cruise ships. |
