The main concerns in the shipboard program are the air emissions released by the paints as they are applied and dry. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs), hazardous air pollutants (HAPS), and particulate matter (PM) emitted from conventional paints used by the Navy typically exceed recent and emerging regulatory limits, especially in California. Paints and coatings applied to Navy ships represent the single largest source of air pollution emissions at shipbuilding and ship repair activities. NAVSEA is testing new low-emissions (high-solids) commercial paints for compliance, but at the same time is looking to increase coating service life, durability, cleanability, ease of removal, and compatibility with underlying surfaces, sreparation techniques, and coatings. This will reduce painting-related maintenance labor by up to 20%, primarily by extending recoating intervals. Exposure of personnel to hazardous substances will be reduced and general working conditions will be improved. Attention is initially focused on identifying and qualifying suitable high-solids marine coatings for fuel tanks, CHT tanks, potable water tanks, bilge spaces, welldeck overheads, and topside applications, and on investigating potential PM control technologies.
Other Environmental Issues
The shipboard environmental RDT&E program can address Fleet environmental concems that are not directly related to ship-generated wastes. Two examples are oil spill response and protected marine animals.
Locating assessing, and cleaning up oil spills is one of the Navy's most visible environmental functions. The mapping, containment removal, transport, and disposal of large amounts of oil spilled on the water requires the rapid deployment of a variety of assets. Logistics and communications are special concerns in these operations, especially where they involve other agencies. A wide variety of equipment, systems, and software tools is needed for complex oil spill response, from simple proven mechanical oil recovery equipment to innovative computer modeling, burning techniques, and oil/water separation technologies. Current developments are focused on sophisticated computer analysis and modeling, asset inventory and tracking, separation of recovered oil and water, and handling and transport of recovered oil.
A growing environmental problem for the Navy is legally-protected marine animals, especially whales and sea turtles. Several areas of significant Fleet operations and exetcises coincide with the habitats or migratory routes of protected marine animals. It is illegal to "harass" marine animals and the definition of hardssment is so broad as to include any action that changes the natural behavior of an animal, including causing it to change course or dive. For example, the Atlantic Fleet ports of Mayport and Kings Bay, as well as adjacent gunnery and bombing ranges, are in or near a federally designated critical habitat for the endangered northern right whale, where regulatory restrictions on maintaining distance from the whales and avoiding harassment severely impact ship and submarine operations and exercises. Ship and submarine shock trials (including the upcoming SEAWOLF trial) have also been affeeted, at significant cost to the Navy, by measures to mitigate impacts on protected marine animals. Research studies of the Navy's Surface Towed Array Surveillance System Low Frequency Active (SURTASS LFA) system off the California coast are the latest focus of environmental groups and Federal regulators. The protection of whales and other marine life is a highly visible and sensitive public issue with a history of litigation against the USCG and Navy. Basic scientific data on species-specific hearing mechanisms and thresholds and the animal's susceptibility to acoustic and pressure events must be combined with new techniques and systems for detecting, tracking, and predicting the movements of vocalizing and non-vocalizing marine animals, focusing initiahy on whales. This will be accomplished through the synergy of ongoing ONR projects and follow-on NAVSEA work, which will utilize existing Navy acoustic and other technologies and systems as much as possible.
