A German shipping company was ordered to pay $800,000 for dumping thousands of gallons of oily bilge waste last year in waters south of the Aleutian Islands.
Prosecutors say AML Ship Management GMBH was operating the City of Tokyo, transporting vehicles from Asia to the West Coast, when the crew intentionally discharged 4,500 gallons of waste into the ocean.
City of Tokyo crew members pumped the waste directly overboard, prosecutors said. A makeshift hose system bypassed an oil-water separator legally mandated for large ships, they said.
The dumping and subsequent falsifying of ship records netted criminal counts under the Clean Water Act and the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, and the company pleaded guilty to the charges in February.
AML was also ordered to come up with a comprehensive environmental compliance plan and was placed on probation for three years.
Probation for the corporate defendant means it will be under increased scrutiny, "including warrantless searches of its vessels and places of business" based on reasonable suspicion that it is breaking the law, according to prosecutors.
A $125,000 community service payment will go to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward for projects related to the Clean Water Act violation committed by AML. That payment is part of the total monetary penalty.
Also sentenced due to the illegal discharge was Sassin Nicholas, the City of Tokyo's chief engineer and the individual most responsible for the violations, according to court documents.
Nicholas was sentenced Friday in federal court in Oregon to five months of house arrest followed by five years of probation.