Shipping line pays $1.4 million fine

Shipping line pays $1.4 million fine Holy House Shipping AB, a Swedish corporation, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Camden, N.J., to pay a $1 million fine and a special assessment of $400,000 in community service payments.
   The carrier will also serve three years of probation for failing to maintain an accurate oil record book in an attempt to conceal illegal discharges of oil-contaminated waste directly into the ocean from one of its ships, the Justice Department announced.
   According to documents filed in the case, on Feb. 27, 2008, U.S. Coast Guard inspectors from Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay boarded the Snow Flower, a 568-foot, Cook Island flagged oceangoing ship, at the marine terminal in Gloucester, N.J., to conduct a routine inspection. Coast Guard inspectors reviewed the ship's oil record book, a required log in which ship engineers must record all transfers and discharges of oil. Inspectors identified a number of discrepancies related to the capacity and use of the ship's oil water separator. In addition, the inspectors identified a pipe that was believed to be used to discharge oil contaminated waste directly to the sea, bypassing the oil water separator.
   Prior to the vessel entering the Gloucester Marine Terminal, crewmembers who worked in the Snow Flower's engine room department, contacted members of the Coast Guard Sector Bay and reported that the ship's chief engineer had ordered the discharge of oily water and oil sludge overboard on the vessel's most recent voyage from Los Angeles to Chile and again on the return voyage to the United States. The crewmembers stated that the discharges were ordered in the Pacific and/or Atlantic oceans and were accomplished by using a metal pipe connected to the vessel's starboard bilge holding tanks.
   Simandle ordered $375,000 be awarded to the two whistle blowers for their efforts.