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E arlier this year the Passenger Vessel Association achieved its most urgent legislative objective relief from the one-size-fits-all out-of-water survival craft law enacted in the year 2010. The language sought by PVA is found in section 301 of Public Law 114-120 signed by the president on February 5 2016. As a result of the new law nearly all PVA vessel operators can continue to maintain the type of survival crafts life floats inflatable buoyant apparatus etc. that have been required by previous Coast Guard regulation. Other legislative goals remain and PVA is working hard to achieve them during a truncated Congressional calendar. The 114th Congress is well into its second and last year. The remaining legislative schedule is roughly six weeks of session between now and mid-July a break of seven weeks for the two political conventions and the traditional August recess about four weeks of session right after Labor Day another break in early October for campaigning and election day and perhaps a few weeks of a lame duck session beginning in mid-November. This abbreviated schedule does not provide many days in which legislative business can occur. The Vessel Incidental Discharge Act VIDA This legislation is an effort to reform the Environmental Protection Agencys Vessel General Permit VGP for inci- dental wastewater discharges from commercial vessels. Smaller commercial vessels that is those under 79 feet in length that dont discharge ballast water are exempt from having to comply with the VGP as a result of a statutory amendment enacted by Congress with PVAs support. Thus many PVA vessel operators do not have PVA Works to Achieve Legislative Goals This Year 18 MAY 2016 FOGHORN LEGISLATIVEREPORT By Ed Welch PVA Legislative Director