Greek owner New Trade Ship Management has agreed to pay a $1.1m fine over illegal discharges of oily bilge water from one of its vessels in US waters.
The shipowner and Dennis Plasabas, chief engineer of the 34,400-dwt Longshore (built 2010), pleaded guilty on Tuesday in San Diego, California, to charges of maintaining false and incomplete records relating to the discharge.
New Trade and Plasabas admitted that oily bilge water was illegally dumped from the Longshore directly into the ocean without being properly processed through required pollution prevention equipment, the US Department of Justice said.
The defendants also admitted that these illegal discharges were not recorded in the vessel’s oil record book as required by law.
On two occasions between October and December 2021, Plasabas ordered crew members to use a portable pneumatic pump and hose to bypass pollution prevention equipment by transferring oily bilge water from the bilge holding tank to the sewage tank, from where it was discharged directly into the ocean.
Plasabas is said to have then failed to record these improper transfers and overboard discharges in the oil record book.
Additionally, in order to create a false and misleading electronic record as though the pollution prevention equipment had been properly used, he directed crew members to pump clean seawater into the bilge holding tank in the same quantity as the amount of oily bilge water that he had ordered transferred to the sewage tank.
Plasabas then processed the clean seawater through the vessel’s pollution prevention equipment as if it was oily bilge water, to make it appear that the pollution prevention equipment was being properly used, when in fact it was not.
The electronic records indicate that 9,600 gallons of clean sea water were run through the pollution prevention equipment, the Department of Justice said.
New Trade will also serve a four-year term of probation, during which any vessels it operates calling on US ports must implement a robust environmental compliance plan.
