Ship company, engineer reach deal in Alaska pollution case

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By DAN JOLING

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A ship company based in Germany and the chief engineer on one of its vessels have agreed to plead guilty to illegally dumping oily water off Alaska.

Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that AML Ship Management GMBH and Nicolas Sassin, the chief engineer on the AML-operated ship City of Tokyo, agreed to plead guilty to violating federal clean water law by knowingly dumping 4,500 gallons of oily bilge water south of the Aleutian Islands.

The company and Sassin, 45, face a separate charge of presenting false pollution oversight records to the U.S. Coast Guard when the vessel docked in Portland, Oregon, prosecutors said.

As part of the plea deal, AML agreed to pay $800,000 in fines and community service payments.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c96feb61ab5a46ac9b698c38c2b1d412/ship-company-engineer-reach-deal-alaska-pollution-case

[Godhumor]

1. The chief bypassed the oily water separator (ows)

For those who don't know, the ows is basically a super long washcloth that is fed into oily water and then run over a "ringer" of some kind. The cleaner water runs back into the tank while the oil heads to a bucket or separate tank. The process keeps repeating until the water is clean enough to be emptied.

The ows is automatically hooked into the bilge system, so the chief had to take the time to bypass it before dumping the oily water. Good catch under the Clean Water Act.

[Omaha Steve]

2. Thanks

Great info.