Amendments to the Marine Invasive Species Act: AB 912
The California State Lands Commission has issued an update regarding Assembly Bill (AB) 912 being signed into law. The AB will bring in the following changes to the Marine Invasive Species Act as from 1st January 2020:
Delays implementation of the California interim and final ballast water discharge performance standards until January 1, 2030, and January 1, 2040, respectively.
Mandates that the Commission adopts regulations to enforce the U.S. Coast Guard ballast water discharge performance standards.
Changes the boundaries of the Pacific Coast Region (PCR).
Defines “land” for purposes of the Marine Invasive Species Act
Establishes documentation and notification requirements for the ballast water management safety exemption.
Authorizes the Commission to sample ballast water and biofouling for research purposes.
The full update issued by the California State Lands Commission is available here.
The multimodal transportation of goods is inherently complex. This complexity is further complicated by the absence of internationally accepted rules governing the multimodal trade. While the shipowner is often the carrier or multimodal transport operator(MTO) under the multimodal transport contract, the rules applicable to the liability of the shipowner are embodied in a mosaic of International Conventions relating to the carriage of goods by sea, by air and by road.
The lengthy judicial proceedings in the French courts arising out of the sinking and massive oil spill from the tanker ERIKA off the coast of Brittany in December 1999, gave rise to numerous questions regarding the interaction between the international oil pollution liability conventions as incorporated into French law and other French legislation which claimants argued should apply. As a result legislation has been passed by France since the ERIKA judgements in an attempt to codify the Erika jurisprudence.
