As of July, the state will inspect individual cruise ships for pollution violations every other year, rather than every year under a program that began in 2021, according to Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation officials.
The cutback occurred without a public notification process, DEC Commissioner Randy Bates said in a conference call with the Juneau Independent on Oct. 2. The change officially took effect when the current fiscal year began July 1.
“There’s no need for an announcement like that,” he said. “It’s just a recalibration, which I have that opportunity to do with all of our inspection protocols and staffing exercises.”
Bates said the decision was made for financial and regulatory reasons, noting on the latter point that other industries undergoing pollution inspections such as mining, oil, seafood and timber are not subject to annual DEC inspections.
“We’re using our resources where we can best use them,” he said. That means “equitable industry treatments so that one industry like the cruise industry isn’t getting over-reviewed on a comparative level with the mining industry.”
Two Juneau state legislators who are members of the finance committees in their respective chambers — Rep. Sara Hannan and Sen. Jesse Kiehl — told the Juneau Independent the change to the inspection schedule came as a surprise, since there was no mention of that possibility during budget discussions at the Capitol during the past session.
“This new, radical reduction raises serious questions about what the Dunleavy administration plans to do with the money they asked the legislature for,” Kiehl said.
The change does not mean discharge limits, or monitoring and reporting requirements for cruise lines, have changed, Bates said.
“We have all of this other protocol of reports and reporting and data submissions on a daily or a weekly or a monthly basis,” he said. “And that’s where we spend so much more time as staff is looking at those, working with the industry on what those reports look like, and if there’s excursions let’s get those fixed immediately.”
Doubts have been raised by state lawmakers and others about the effectiveness of the state’s Commercial Passenger Vessel Environmental Compliance program implemented in 2021. The program requires vessel owners and operators to complete an annual registration, pay compliance fees, and submit detailed voyage reports, sampling plans and discharge logs.
Critics say the current program is less stringent than the Ocean Ranger, which has been effectively dead since 2019 due to Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoing its operating funding. Monitors with that program filed 1,580 daily reports in 2018, the last year it was active, compared to 76 total inspections on large cruise ships by DEC in 2025.
“The program was extensive, but also expensive,” Kiehl stated in his email to the Independent. “There was room to reform it, but Dunleavy wanted only to end it.”
DEC recorded 21 instances of cruise ships failing to meet wastewater regulations in 2025, compared to 56 wastewater and 40 oil pollution violations reported by Ocean Ranger observers in 2018, according to a Chilkat Valley News article published in April.
A $4 per-passenger state fee is still collected via the Ocean Ranger program approved by voters in 2006, but funding is being redirected to other uses — including possible electrical hookups at cruise ship docks in Juneau and Ketchikan.
