Alaska News

Shipping company pleads guilty to oil-dumping violations off Aleutians

A German shipping company pleaded guilty on Friday to two criminal counts concerning dumping oily waste last year in U.S. waters south of the Aleutian Islands.

The guilty pleas, part of a settlement agreement filed in federal court this month, were entered by attorney Michael Chalos on behalf of AML Ship Management GMBH at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.

The company operates the ship City of Tokyo, which was transporting vehicles from Asia to the West Coast last year when the violations occurred, according to court documents.

The City of Tokyo, sailing about 165 miles south of the Aleutians, pumped about 4,500 gallons of oily bilge water directly overboard, according to court documents. To send the waste into the ocean, crew members used a makeshift hose system that bypassed the oil-water separator that is legally mandated for large ships,

The dumping and subsequent falsifying of ship records netted criminal counts under the Clean Water Act and the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.

AML Ship Management has agreed to pay $800,000 in fines and community service payments, carry out a corporationwide environmental compliance program to improve operations, and serve three years of criminal probation. Sentencing is tentatively scheduled for May 26.

The guilty pleas and environmental compliance program are "in the best interests of the corporation," said an AML Ship Management board of directors resolution filed in federal court.

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Also pleading guilty on Friday was Sassin Nicholas, the City of Tokyo's chief engineer and the individual most responsible for the violations, according to court documents.

Nicholas -- erroneously referred to as Nicholas Sassin in earlier court filings -- was also charged with one count of violating the Clean Water Act and another count of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships. He entered his plea in Portland, Oregon, where he has been staying since the City of Tokyo arrived there in September.

Under a plea deal, federal authorities have agreed to seek no more than a six-month term of imprisonment for Nicholas, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Feldis. His sentencing is scheduled for April 1, and he has the right to seek a lesser sentence, such as probation, Feldis said.

Charges against the company were consolidated into one case in Alaska, and those against the chief engineer were consolidated into one case in Oregon.

The City of Tokyo case is one in a series of deliberate oily waste-dumping incidents discovered by law-enforcement authorities, Feldis said.

"We're obviously seeing that pollution from ships continues to be a worldwide problem and a problem that affects Alaska," he said.

The U.S. unit of Noble Corp., one of the world's major offshore-drilling contractors, pleaded guilty in December to similar charges, he noted. Noble, in a plea agreement, admitted that crew members aboard the Noble Discoverer, a drill ship contracted by Shell to work in the Chukchi Sea, used an illegal pump-and-hose system to send oily bilge water directly overboard.

In its sentence, which was for eight felony counts, Noble Drilling was ordered to pay $12.2 million in fines and community-service payments, serve four years of probation and undergo a program to reform environmental management.

More recently, a cargo ship operated by another German company was detained earlier this month by the U.S. Coast Guard in Dutch Harbor on suspicion of similar crimes.

The Lindavia, operated by Herm. Dauelsberg GmbH & Co. KG, spent two weeks in Dutch Harbor. It won permission on Thursday to leave Dutch Harbor, but the company was required to leave some crew members in Alaska. "We're investigating similar allegations of improper handling of oily waste," Feldis said.

In the City of Tokyo case, as with the Noble Discoverer case, reports from the crew led to criminal prosecution.

"There was one particular crew member who came forward" about the City of Tokyo waste practices, Feldis said. "Future investigation confirmed the environmental crimes that the defendants ultimately pled guilty to."

In the Noble Discoverer case, $512,000 of the company's penalty was designated to go to a crew member considered to be a whistleblower.

Yereth Rosen

Yereth Rosen was a reporter for Alaska Dispatch News.

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