PORTLAND, May 17, 2025 - The cruise ship industry doesn’t even need passengers to cause a major row in a port city.
On Monday, May 12, the cruise ship, MSC Meraviglia, which was the sixth largest cruise ship in the world when it was launched in 2017, sailed into Portland unannounced by horn or tug, to make technical repairs.
The ship arrived with crew but none of the 5,642 maximum number of passengers the ship can accommodate.
“The 19-deck ship was not only obtrusive, it was also noxious, as its heavy exhaust and scrubber wash soon filled the pristine harbor in Casco Bay,” stated JoAnn Locktov, co-founder of Portland Cruise Control in a press release. The light pollution from the ship also lit up the harbor. See photo below by Maggy Wolf.
Because ships typically do not stay overnight here, residents were not accustomed to the harbor being lit up. “That ship was ablaze every single night, and you saw the air, the emissions that were coming out at night,” Locktov said. “They only had crew on board. They did not have 5000 passengers,”
After the smoke turned black by mid-week, city officials received more than 50 complaints from residents and finally negotiated with the captain to burn more expensive, less toxic marine gas oil instead of the low grade, cheap fuel, Locktov said.
Locktov credited Ethan Hipple, the city's director of parks, recreation and facilities, for listening to residents’ concerns and making that change.
“It was because of all the people who voiced their dismay over the pollution being caused by the MSC Meraviglia that the ship has now made a critical change in the quality of our air and water. The cruise industry must be held accountable for the pollution they cause. I don't want people to ever forget that their voices can create a positive difference. I applaud the city for listening, reacting, and finding a solution to the negative environmental impacts of the ship.”
Locktov said she was told the city earned $23,000 to $25,000 in fees from the ship but that because there were no passengers, local businesses were not making any money.
According to a statement issued by the ship’s owner, MSC Cruises, the Meraviglia was in need of technical repairs.
The problem was the vessel’s inability to operate at standard cruising speeds, as the company explained in a letter to affected guests. “As a result, and with deep regret, we have made the very difficult decision to cancel your upcoming sailing,” MSC continued.
When the ship arrived in Portland Monday, “Residents immediately took to social media and Portland's 311 click fix reporting process, to describe the public health impacts they were suffering from, including difficulty breathing, coughing, exacerbated asthma, sore throats, and respiratory distress” Locktov stated. “Windows were forced to be closed and people questioned the value of booking a ship for an extended stay in Portland without the tangible benefit of passenger spending.
“If you have a ship of that size, especially that needs to be repaired and needs five days to work on a repair, the last place you want to do that is in a port adjacent to a residential neighborhood and a historic district.
“You take it to an industrial port; you take it to a port that's way out of the way. So if there are issues with the exhaust and with the everything that the ship has to do, it's not going literally into people's homes.”
(In October 2023, I published this article on how Charleston, S.C. ousted Carnival Cruise Lines from using it as a home port because of similar pollution concerns.)
The MSC Meriviglia has a F rating in Water Quality compliance by Friends of the Earth because it uses a scrubber to flush pollutants from its exhaust directly into the water,” Locktov stated.
“Although Casco Bay has a ‘No Discharge Area/Zone’ designation, it only applies to sewage and not scrubber wash. Along with the air pollution, the ship was discharging millions of gallons of toxic scrubber wash into the bay, at significant potential harm to the marine environment,” Locktov wrote.
According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, several ports in North America have banned scrub water from being discharged.
California bans scrubbers within 24 miles of its coast. Connecticut prohibits wash water from any vessel. In Hawaii, discharging is allowed if shipowners obtained an official license or permit when entering territorial waters. In Florida and Washington State, port-level measures are in place.
In Canada, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority bans discharges while a vessel is at anchorage or at berth.
Thank you for covering cruise ship news in Portland and supporting our work. We are a new volunteer organization and working very hard to bring awareness to the cruise ship issues in Portland, which are numerous! Hearing from so many people who suffered health impacts from this massive polluting ship was really difficult to witness. No form of "entertainment" in our harbor has the right to make residents sick.
When they tell you cruise ships aren't big polluters . . . .