Editor's note: This story is part of a three-part Sunday special investigating the possiblity of allowing criuise ships to leave from Savannah. Also see:
Monk seals are sweet-faced marine mammals, endangered in the Mediterranean and Hawaii and extinct in the Caribbean. There’s no record of them ever appearing in Georgia.
Yet a $130,000 cruise feasibility study, paid for by Savannah, Visit Savannah, Georgia and the Savannah Waterfront Association, cites monk seals as a species of concern for cruise vessels here, noting:
“... the Monk Seal would likely be too small to recognize from the vessel bridge.”
BEA Architects authored the study, which was presented to city officials in installments throughout 2010 and 2011. Much of the language BEA uses in its environmental impact findings is identical to language used in a 2008 cruise feasibility study performed for the state of Hawaii by another consultant, ICF International. In fact, Googling a snippet of the monk seal findings quoted above brings up the ICF study.
Architect and BEA Principal Bruno Elias Ramos said his company used an archive of information it has accumulated by participating in cruise and ferry conferences to produce the Savannah study.
Despite the similarity in language and the inclusion of the Hawaiian species, he at first said he didn’t think there had been any cutting and pasting from the ICF report into the Savannah study.
“I doubt that would be the case,” he said. “It may be the same source (for both reports). It may be that a prior report was used.”
After comparing the documents side by side, he said via email that a member of BEA’s consulting team, Charles Towsley, was a contributing author to the Hawaii report.
“We were able to apply portions of that data which pertained to known impacts of the cruise industry, and hence are valid for the cruise industry globally, including Savannah,” Ramos wrote in an email. “The chart for marine mammals had a missed typo, which was intended to reference ‘small whales’ not seals.”
Ramos said the cruise ship feasibility study was meant to be a scoping study only — one that identifies key issues and factors that would affect moving to the next level of a detailed study — but when Savannah sought consulting services in May 2010, “environmental impact analysis on the waterways and air quality” was one of six study objectives outlined in the Request for Proposals.
The resulting nine PowerPoint presentations and 23-page report from Miami-based BEA include a three-page chart of “key findings” on impacts on the marine environment — including the monk seals — that paints a rosy picture of “unlikely impacts” and “minimal concerns.”
That’s not how Marcie Keever of the environmental group Friends of the Earth sees it.
“From the environmental perspective, I would say it really just doesn’t take a look at the right things,” said Keever, the organization’s oceans and vessels project director. “With regard to mammals, right whales are the things they should be taking a look at. On the East Coast, that’s the most likely marine mammal that could be hit.”
Whales are mentioned generically in BEA’s chart, but there’s no specific mention of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, a large whale that migrates to Georgia waters every winter to give birth.
The report also dismisses water quality concerns, citing but not quantifying the cruise industry’s use of advanced wastewater treatment systems to protect water and concluding the efforts are sufficient to avoid “significant, quantifiable impacts.”
Keever said that while about 60 percent of the ships graded for environmental friendliness by her organization have installed advanced wastewater treatment, that percentage varies greatly by cruise line.
“If you look line by line, Carnival only has two of 24,” she said. “So it really does depend on who you’re inviting into your port.”
On air pollution, BEA’s report makes broad statements about the existence of regulations, green technologies and practices, but doesn’t comment on possible impacts.
The Request for Proposal specifically requests “where possible the impacts should be converted into monetary value for further assessment.” No such monetary values are provided in the presentations the Savannah Morning News received from the city in response to an open records request.
Keever said 23 of 148 cruise ships have shore power that allows them to turn off their engines while in port if the port is equipped with shore-power capability. Otherwise, a cruise ship in port for 10 hours produces emissions equivalent to 34,000 trucks idling the same amount of time.
BEA’s key findings on heritage sites — institutions and places considered to have great cultural significance — includes an overview of Savannah history that’s identical to the description on Visit Savannah’s website.
The firm then lists nine heritage sites and dismisses the possibility of impacts from overcrowding from cruise ship passengers.
“Physical impact damages from the increased visitors to the heritage sites are not expected to increase significantly,” the presentation states, without evidence of why.
The nine sites are the Savannah Historic District, Andrew Low House, Bamboo Farm and Coastal Gardens, Beach Institute African-American Cultural Center, Bethesda Home for Boys, Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Christ Church of Savannah, Davenport House and the Cotton Exchange.
The list struck Historic Savannah Executive Director Daniel Carey as odd.
“If the incompleteness of the identified list of ‘heritage sites’ and the cursory attention given to potential impacts upon them is any indication of the quality of this feasibility study, then we have little reason to rely on its veracity,” he said.
BEA’s feasibility study — which the city now refers to as a marketing study — was meant to be a step toward defining the $197,500 phase-one study now under way, Ramos said.
“The first-phase study was only an initial feasibility study and not intended to be interpreted as a full impact study but a ‘scoping’ study, which identifies key issues and significant factors, which affect moving forward to the next level of detailed study and is now under way with site-specific analysis,” he wrote in an email.
Carey is concerned it’s a rocky foundation.
“The greater question: Is the city getting its money’s worth?” he said. “That’s from the taxpayers’ perspective. It’s really important we get this right to have the best info available and presented in a way we can use. If we’re not getting that, we’re starting off on the wrong course, which could lead to a disastrous conclusion.”