Thursday, 4:30 PM
Firm admits to polluting local waters
By David Abel, GLOBE STAFF
The nation’s largest oil tanker company Wednesday pleaded guilty in federal court to polluting waters around five cities, including Boston, and agreed to pay $27 million in fines, prosecutors said.
The plea agreement by New York-based Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. is the "largest-ever involving deliberate vessel pollution," prosecutors said in a prepared statement. The company will pay another $10 million after pleading guilty in January to other charges in Texas.
The company acknowledged that 12 oil tankers illegally leaked "sludge and oily waste" in Boston, Portland, Maine, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Wilmington, N.C., between June 2001 and March 2006. (Also, between August 2001 and October 2003, the company’s tankers released oily waste in the waters off Nantucket and Mount Desert Island in Maine.)
The agreement includes a three-year term of probation, which requires the company to follow an environmental compliance program that includes a court-appointed monitor and outside independent auditing.
Prosecutors said the company used false oil record books, a required log inspected by the Coast Guard, to conceal the pollution. They also said the company tried to hide their actions by discharging at night and hiding marks caused by the use of bypass pipes.
In their court filing, prosecutors said the company’s violations "were so systemic, repetitive, and long-standing that the criminal conduct amounted to a serious failure of corporate and shore-side management."
At sentencing in Boston, US District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay awarded 12 company crew members $437,500 each for blowing the whistle on the violations, prosecutors said.
The award is based on fines outlined by the federal Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.
In a statement read in court, Captain Robert Johnston, head of the company’s global shipping operation, said:
"I deeply regret what has happened as a result of our company’s conduct. What transpired is not in line with our company’s core values and I want to assure you that we are working very hard to ensure this never happens again."
