TUI Cruises’ Mein Schiff 3 and Mein Schiff 6 were the first to test the €1.8 million system
By
Rebecca Gibson |
The Port of Kiel opened a new wastewater facility to enable cruise ships and passenger ferries to dispose of their waste at its Ostseekai Cruise Terminal.
Built over the past six months at a cost of more than €1.8 million, the new treatment facility increases Kiel’s current wastewater reception capability tenfold, allowing ships to discharge up to 300 cubic metres of water per hour.
The facility was opened on 14 June during a ceremony attended by Kiel’s Lord Mayor Ulf Kämpfer, the port’s chief executive Dirk Claus, Captain Kjell Holm from TUI Cruises, construction chief Doris Grondke, and Dietmar Wienholdt, head of the Water Management and Marine and Coastal Protection Department in the Schleswig-Holstein Environment Ministry.
“With the new facility, we are taking on a pioneering role,” said Claus. “There is hardly any other port that can, as yet, handle such large volumes of wastewater from ships.”
TUI Cruises’ Mein Schiff 3 and Mein Schiff 6 were the first to test the system on 14 June and the port authority expects that nearly all the cruise ships that berth at the Ostseekai Terminal will discharge their wastewater there in future.
The port’s new treatment equipment also enables it to meet new regulations that will require all cruise ships visiting the Baltic countries to dispose of their wastewater in port from 2021. New ships must do this by 2019.
“We are investing in a cleaner Baltic,” said Claus. “This capacity increase is Kiel’s contribution to marine protection and meets regulatory demands which are not even due to take effect until 2021.”