Fouling Alaska Sea Floor Costs Icicle Seafoods a Fortune

SEATTLE, Washington, September 21, 2007 (ENS) - Seattle-based Icicle Seafoods, Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiary, Evening Star, Inc., have agreed to spend nearly $2 million to resolve Clean Water Act violations associated with the operation of the M/V Northern Victor, a seafood processing vessel, in Alaska's Udagak Bay.

The settlement requires the payment of a $900,000 civil penalty.

Icicle has already spent approximately $1.1 million cleaning up a historic seafood waste pile that created a one-acre dead zone on the Alaskan seafloor.

EPA Northwest Regional Administrator in Seattle Elin Miller said seafood processors need to look for new ways to protect the health of the seafloor, starting with preventing waste piles.

"Contrary to popular belief, waste piles on the seafloor do have a long-lasting, damaging effect on the environment," said Miller. "This waste, particularly the bony material, doesn't ‘just go away'. It degrades slowly, causing harm for decades."

The violations occurred aboard the seafood processing vessel, the M/V Northern Victor, which operates in Udagak Bay on the eastern side of Unalaska Island. The vessel is permitted to discharge seafood processing waste by an EPA issued National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.

Several violations were observed during an inspection conducted in 2003. Following the inspection, Icicle made significant improvements aboard the vessel to remedy the violations. However, the companies failed to comply with one major provision of the permit, which required the cleanup of a historic seafood waste pile created by the vessel's discharges prior to 1999.

After the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against Icicle and Evening Star in 2006, the companies undertook the removal of the historic waste pile. They subsequently agreed to pay the $900,000 civil penalty.

The Northern Victor is the largest of Icicle's processing vessels and the second largest processing vessel in the United States fishing industry.

With quarters for 222 crewmembers, the ship processes Alaskan pollock at her primary operating base in the Aleutians Islands near Dutch Harbor and renders the waste into fish meal and fish oil.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.