ALBANY - Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Wednesday announced a major victory in his efforts to protect New York State’s Great Lakes from environmental damage caused by the dumping of contaminated ballast water by large commercial ships.

New York, together with five other Great Lakes states and several environmental groups, won a court decision stipulating that large vessels and other oceangoing freight ships can no longer discharge pollutant-containing ballast water without a permit. 

Cuomo hailed the decision, stating that it will significantly reduce pollution in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, thereby protecting the ecosystems across upstate New York and ensuring that commercial and recreational fishing are not harmed.

In a decision issued Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that ships must comply with the Clean Water Act. Beginning September 30, 2008, ships will no longer be able to discharge pollutant-containing ballast water without a permit from the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA had previously exempted these destructive discharges of “biological pollution” from Clean Water Act controls, despite clear evidence that ballast water discharges from oceangoing ships were bringing many aquatic invasive species such as the infamous zebra mussel into U.S. waters.