Major seafood processor agrees to civil penalty
ANCHORAGE, Alaska —
A Seattle-based seafood company will pay a $2.5 million civil penalty to settle allegations that it violated clean water law at processing plants in Alaska, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
Trident Seafoods Corp. also agreed to invest more than $30 million in waste controls, including the construction of plant to turn seafood waste into fish meal at Naknek at Alaska’s Bristol Bay, home of the world’s largest sockeye salmon run.
The settlement addresses a perennial problem of what do to with fish heads, skin, guts and bones removed from Alaska’s massive seafood industry, which accounts for half of all wild fish caught in the United States.
Commercial fishermen in 2009 landed 1.8 million metric tons of fish in Alaska waters and more than half of that weight is not destined for the dinner table.
Some waste is turned into animal feed, but for processors working seasonally in remote Alaska locations, using waste for fish meal or fish oil has been a money loser. Seafood companies can instead obtain permits to grind waste and dump it back into the ocean.
However, if done incorrectly, waste discharge can smother the ocean floor and the creatures that live there. Seafood waste piles can stick around for a decade more, said Tara Martich, an EPA a pollution discharge compliance officer.
“Essentially what this pile consists of is this massive carpet of gelatinous goo and it suffocates sea life,” Martich from Seattle at a press availability. “And so, as it’s doing that, it’s disrupting the entire ecosystem in that area, in some cases having effects outside the footprint, even, of the carpet and creating dead zones.”
A seafood processing waste pile in Akutan Harbor in the eastern Aleutian Islands is estimated to be about 50 acres, according to the EPA.
An EPA complaint contends Trident, one of the world’s largest seafood processors, had more than 480 Clean Water Act violations over five years at 14 of its on-shore and off-shore Alaska processing facilities.
The agency said the company had discharged waste without a necessary permit, exceeded discharge limits, failed to comply with restrictions on discharge locations and created oxygen-depleting “zones of deposit” that occupy more than the allowed 1 acre of seafloor. The Justice Department said the violations included discharges into at least two national wildlife refuges. Trident was also faulted for inadequate monitoring.
A phone message left with company spokesman Joe Plesha was not immediately returned Wednesday.
The Justice Department announcement said Trident will be required to invest $30 million to $40 million or more for source control and waste pile remediation. The Naknek fish meal plant will have an annual capacity to process at least 30 million pounds of waste annually.
The Justice Department said Trident has also agreed to reduce waste at Akutan, Cordova, St. Paul and Ketchikan plants and to monitor discharges near Sitka. The array of steps is projected to reduce Trident’s fish processing discharges by more than 105 million pounds annually.
The company pledged to study offshore waste piles at its plants and evaluate decomposition of piles at Akutan, Ketchikan and Cordova, and to remove or remediate the piles based on the studies.
The settlement agreement was filed in federal court in Seattle. The public has 30 days to comment on the agreement.
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Online:
http://1.usa.gov/qpdtJB
