American Seafoods Fined for Clean Water Act Violations
American Seafoods Co. and owners of its fish-processing vessels have been fined nearly $1 million by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for multiple violations of the Clean Water Act.
On Sept. 28, the companies were cited by the EPA for hundreds of violations, including discharging waste in the protected Heceta/Stonewall Banks complex along the Oregon coast, failure to monitor its discharges and missing or inaccurate information in required annual reports.
Ed Kowalski, director of EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division in Seattle, said that in amassing hundreds of violations from illegal discharges to sloppy and even non-existent record-keeping that American Seafoods had demonstrated a clear disregard for the fragile and valuable resources that sustain it...