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| Our Port: Cruise Ship Heaven - As seen from the Perez Museum. |
Did you know we have no way to get rid of sewage from the ships. It has to be pumped and carted away to Pepe Diaz's house. There is no sewage system at the port as far as I know. And,
cruise ships have to idle their engines all the time when in Port. Do you know how much air pollution that causes? It might be equal to
40,000 cars in an hour for each cruise ship docked (in this case 4). In this photo you can see a gray plume in the air over the 4 ships at dock. How do you feel about that Fisher Island?
Cruise ships pay a cost per passenger to the port which is a good source of revenue. Too bad they don't hire their crew locally to give us jobs. For every cruise passenger they have multiple crew members -- but not from here. The crew might be a third of the passengers on the ship. Let's hire local Miami Dade County residents Commissioners!! Cargo gives us jobs, not cruise ships. They just pollute.
10 comments:
University of Miami just got a climate change grant ($125 million in federal funds). Miami Beach is using climate change to get federal money for beach sand. This entire city is a symbolism of how people use good causes just to secure federal funds. The tourism industry is one of the worst polluters, yet not one word of this will be mentioned by local officials. Do any of these ships have shore power capability? Does the port have shore power capability?
Why is there no shore power at the cruise ship terminal? Perhaps the electrical system infrastructure would be expensive. More expensive than the tunnel?
If scrubbers can clean up air from incinerators in Europe, they sure can scrub these ships stacks. Just require the ships to add scrubbers.
"The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html?pagewanted=all
Never happen. Cruise industry is all about cheap entertainment on the back of negative externalities: third world labor, pollution, no taxes via tax haven registration etc.
Why isn't the County Commission INSISTING on more local jobs from the cruise ships?
What a good place for jobs jobs jobs Mr. mayor.
Well, depending on the size of the ship, it does vary. I will give a few examples below.
Carnival Valor-1150 crew size
Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas-858 crew size
Norwegian Gem-1089 crew size
Costa Magica-1068 crew size
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/under-jeb-bush-housing-prices-fueled-floridas-boom-then-it-all-went-bust/2015/07/27/3cb40da2-2409-11e5-b72c-2b7d516e1e0e_story.html?hpid=z1
It looks like some national reporters are catching on to what Eye On Miami has been saying for years!
http://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=1214
I wonder do the freighters use shore power while at the dock?
I've been on a grand total of two cruises. I'm 50. It's not my preferred method of vacationing. I prefer to get more local. That's difficult in all ports of call of the major lines. I did wander around Cozumel for most of the day once while eschewing the typical tourist fare along the strip.
There is a great deal of commerce here that is cruise related. I'm curious though. Where does all the food come from? The booze? Do the ships use local purveyors for these items or are they bought overseas where taxes may be lower? The ports of call I've been to do not appear to be setup for large scale provisioning like the POM.
Here's something interesting. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue operates a fire boat out of the POM. On many occasions, the boat has been called to pickup sick and/or injured passengers from both cruise ships and freighters. This saves the line many thousands of dollars as they are not required to pay a harbor pilot, burn fuel to return to the dock, and pay dockage fees. The cruise lines and freighter lines do not pay anything for this service. Why not?
From what I've seen the ships dock in the morning, and by late afternoon are back out. It may be that it's not cost effective to do a full shutdown for only a few hour before heading back out.
Yes. Typically the turn around in Miami is just a few hours. Dock by 6a or 7a, everybody off the ship by around 9a. Boarding for the next trip is around 3p or 4p. At least that's how Carnival works. I suppose the other lines do as well. You can't make money sitting at the dock.
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