U.S. Attorney for Karen L. Loeffler made the announcement late last week that AML Ship Management GMBH and Nicolas Sassin, Chief Engineer of the company’s Liberian-flagged MV City of Tokyo car carrier, were both charged with violating the Clean Water Act for knowingly dumping oil into United States’ waters off the coast of Alaska in August 2014. Separately, both AML and Chief Engineer Nicolas Sassin have also been charged in the District of Oregon with violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS) for knowingly creating and presenting false records to the U.S. Coast Guard when it arrived in port in Portland, Oregon in September 2014.
The Clean Water Act charges in Alaska and the APPS charges in Oregon are felony offenses.
The federal charges allege that on or about August 29, 2014, the chief engineer knowingly bypassed the vessel’s Oil Water Separator and discharged oily bilge water directly into the sea while traveling through the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coast Alaska during a voyage from South Korea to Canada and on to Tacoma, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Sassin and AML then failed to record the discharges into the Oil Record Book and knowingly presenting the false and fictitious ORB to the U.S. Coast Guard upon inspection in Portland, Oregon on September 5, 2014.
Under the terms of a plea agreement filed in federal court, AML agreed to plead guilty to the Clean Water Act and APPS charges and pay total fines of $800,000 and receive three years probation. Chief Engineer Sassin also signed a plea agreement agreeing to plead guilty to the Alaska and Oregon charges, although the Justice department did not specify on the terms of the agreement.
Specifically, AML admits that while the M/V City of Tokyo was approximately 165 nautical miles south of Sanak Island in the Aleutian Islands, the Chief Engineer used an illegal pump system, or a so-called “magic pipe”, to knowingly discharge approximately 4,500 gallons of oily bilge water directly overboard. The discharge created a sheen in the water off the stern of the vessel which was then witnessed by other crewmembers aboard the ship.
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From aerial surveillance by governments around the world, we
can see that illegal dumping by commercial ships is commonplace.
Five to fifteen percent of all large vessels are believed to
break the law by discharging waste oil into the oceans.
The world’s shipping fleet is comprised of nearly 88,000
vessels. About 50,000 of these ships trade internationally.
It is believed that 85-90% of the world fleet complies with
the law. Unfortunately, that means that the remainder, some 5,000-7,500
vessels, routinely and intentionally pollutes the seas.
Estimates of illegal dumping range from 70 million to 210
million gallons of waste oil spilled into the world’s waters each year.
WHY DO SOME MARINERS INTENTIONALLY POLLUTE?
Oil pollution is illegal, not to mention extremely harmful
to the environment. So why do some ship owners and crewmembers still decide to
pollute?
It comes down to money.
Modern cargo and container ships are amazing feats of
industrial engineering. The machines that power them require oil-based fuels
and lubricants to run smoothly, and oily leaks are commonplace.
Nearly all of the foul water and liquid waste on a ship
drains into the bottom, an area known as the bilge tanks. Oil from leaky
machinery also accumulates in the bilge.
Commercial ships often use a heavy fuel oil that produces an
oily sludge when burned.
Oil tankers, in addition to accumulating regular operational
waste, must also wash out their tanks between each trip, adding thousands of
gallons of waste oil to the bilge tanks.
These sludge oil and bilge tanks must be emptied regularly.
Until the mid-twentieth century, it was general practice to
simply pump sludge and oily bilge water into the sea.
However, as the environmental impact of oil pollution became
clear, this practice was banned by the International Convention for the
Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil in 1954. These rules were
strengthened in the 1970’s following the wreck of the Torrey Canyon in England
by the creation of an international marine pollution treaty known as MARPOL.
MARPOL was designed to eliminate oil pollution in the seas.
It established that all ships must have functioning oil
pollution control systems and keep a detailed and accurate oil record book.
It also requires that ships use an oily water separator to
ensure that all waste water pumped overboard has an oil content of less than 15
parts per million.
THE COST OF COMPLIANCE
A 2002 report by the European Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development estimated that the average annual cost of meeting
the MARPOL regulations runs from $30,000 a year for an average sized cargo ship
to $55,000 for a large container vessel, and the cost can rise to $150,000 per
year for a very large oil taker.
These costs represent, on average, between 3.5% and 6.5% of
a ship's overall operating expenses.
Unfortunately, sometimes crewmembers or ship owners try to
save money or the time it takes to unload waste oil in port by breaking the
law.
Crewmembers may install a pipe or hose, known in the
shipping industry as a “magic pipe,” to bypass the oily water separator and
pump the polluted water directly into the ocean.
Alert! Intentionally dumping oily waste in the water is
illegal and is actively prosecuted in the United States, resulting in large
fines and jail sentences.
Crewmembers who blow the whistle on oil pollution crimes can
often get awards of up to half the total fine.
See a list of recent cases that show why the US Department
of Justice has become renowned for its tough stance against oil pollution.