Clean Up Carnival Coalition delivered a petition signed by 46,000 people to the National Park Service’s Anchorage Regional Office, calling for the suspension of Carnival Corporation’s cruise ship permits in Glacier Bay National Park, ancestral lands of the Huna Tlingit, until the company installs third-party monitoring of water and air pollution on its ships and makes the data available to the public in real time.
Carnival Corporation must prove that it can stop using the waters as a dumping ground for its sewage, greywater, and food waste, and start complying with both the terms of those contracts and the letter of the law.
The petition comes after Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy eliminated funding for Ocean Rangers, the state’s program for on-board cruise ship inspectors. The program was created by a ballot initiative and was paid for by cruise ship passengers until the Governor’s veto in July 2019.
“In 1996, Alaska leaders used the National Park Service to ban the Hoonah Tlingit from Glacier Bay National Park as contaminants to a pristine scientific laboratory. In that same regulation, the number of large cruise ship entries doubled from what had been allowed. It was all about the money,” said Wanda Culp, a member of the Huna Tlingit.
“I call upon all human intelligence to speak out against big industries owning our governments, while they dictate substandard living upon us and plan for the full destruction of Earth’s remaining untouched wildlands.”
In 2018, Carnival Corporation’s Holland America Line committed a felony inside Glacier Bay National Park when it illegally dumped untreated greywater and failed to report it to the Coast Guard. This felony occurred while Carnival Corporation was already on probation for seven felony convictions for the intentional illegal dumping of oily waste for nearly a decade and falsifying records to cover it up. In June 2019, Carnival Corporation pled guilty to several probation violations in Glacier Bay and worldwide, including illegally dumping wastewater and plastic into the ocean and burning dirty fuel where it wasn’t allowed.
The National Park Service issued a mere US$250 fine to Carnival Corporation for the dumping in Glacier Bay National Park, and the State of Alaska issued a $17,000 fine to the company.