Cruise ships discharge under a 2014 Alaska permit kept alive by an administrative continuance

Twenty-eight large cruise ships discharged treated wastewater into Alaska waters last season under a state permit written in 2014 that expired on paper in 2019 and was never replaced. Nine of those discharge events were unauthorized, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's own compliance report for the 2025 season.

Residents of Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan have no open process in which to comment on the terms. As of Aug. 19, Alaska's Online Public Notices carried no draft renewal, comment period or renewal schedule for the permit.

What has kept the permit in force is a single letter. On July 14, 2021, program manager Gene McCabe wrote to large vessel operators that, consistent with 18 AAC 15.110, the permit "remains fully effective and enforceable." Its terms stay in place, the letter said, "until the effective date of a renewed permit." The letter names no date for that permit and describes no process for producing one.

That regulation is titled "Administrative continuance of expiring permits," and it makes the arrangement lawful rather than a lapse. It also carries a condition. The conditions of an expired permit continue, it says, only if the permittee timely submitted a renewal application and the department has neither denied it nor revoked the continued permit. The department's published material does not say who filed a renewal application, or when.

The department's 2025 Large Commercial Passenger Vessel Report counts about 1.8 million passengers carried by large vessels during the season, 98.8 percent of all cruise passengers who visited Alaska. Forty-four large ships operated in state waters, and 28 registered to discharge. State inspectors made 76 inspections: 50 in port, including six re-inspections, and 26 underway, with an inspector staying aboard overnight to watch operations at sea.

The nine unauthorized discharge events are each named to a vessel. The largest by volume was the Disney Wonder, which reported 28 separate incidents between May 21 and May 28 in which 4,210 cubic meters of treated wastewater went overboard from holding tanks without the advance arrangement the permit requires. The report does not explain how 28 incidents are counted within nine events. The department issued a notice of violation, and the operator changed its procedures. Other named incidents involved the Norwegian Joy discharging 412 cubic meters at the Skagway Ore Dock, an area outside permit coverage; the Norwegian Jade releasing 17 cubic meters of food waste in the Alexander Archipelago between April 20 and May 8; and the Ruby Princess releasing 42 cubic meters of swimming pool water through a valve its automated system had reported as closed.

Four years of sampling results appear in the same report. Vessels exceeding the pH limit rose from two in 2023 and two in 2024 to six in 2025. Vessels exceeding the fecal coliform daily limit numbered six in 2022, four in 2023, five in 2024 and six in 2025. Biochemical oxygen demand exceedances fell from seven vessels in 2022 to one in 2024, then rose to three in 2025. Over the same four seasons the number of ships registered to discharge climbed from 23 to 27, 27 and 28.

The department's summary says most sampling violations were minor and quickly resolved, and that every vessel returned to permit limits on subsequent sampling. ADEC has separately defended the underlying design of the permit, stating in its 2015 response to comments that permitted mixing zones are sized and located to prevent toxic or adverse exposures and that untreated wastewater is not permitted. The Alaska Cruise Association argued the prior point-of-discharge limits the state considered were too stringent for ships or Alaska land-based facilities to meet, and supported the use of dilution zones instead.

This account is drawn from the department's permit file, the 2021 extension letter, the 2025 compliance report and the text of the regulation. No response from cruise operators or industry groups appears in that material beyond the Alaska Cruise Association's earlier comments on the permit's design, which the material does not date. The 2026 season is drawing to a close; the department posts compliance reports on its cruise ship reports page.