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Seward Fish Plant Pays $85,000 in Pollution Fines
07/01/03
By Paula Dobbyn
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Icicle Sfd - Seward plant |
ICICLE: Seattle-based company to cut waste discharges into bay.
Anchorage Daily News
Published:
July 1, 2003
Icicle Seafoods Inc. will pay an $85,000 fine for violating the federal Clean Water Act at its Seward processing plant, the company and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said.
The Seattle-based company also agreed to cut in half the amount of fish waste it annually discharges into Resurrection Bay, from 10 million pounds to 5 million.
Icicle's problems surfaced in 1999 when dive surveys, an EPA inspection and the company's own reports revealed that an underwater pile of fish waste exceeded the legal size limit, said Robert Grandinetti, an EPA compliance officer. Instead of being an acre or less, the pile measured about 1.4 acres, he said.
The violations also included fish waste not being properly ground up, and foam, oily waste and sludge seen floating on the water, Grandinetti said.
PROCESSORS ARE ALLOWED TO DUMP GROUND-UP FISH GUTS, HEADS, SLIME AND OTHER WASTE INTO THE WATER PROVIDED THEY HAVE A NATIONAL POLLUTION DISCHARGE PERMIT. THE PERMIT SAYS THE PIECES OF WASTE MUST BE NO LARGER THAN HALF AN INCH IN DIAMETER AND THE UNDERWATER PILE CANNOT EXCEED THE 1-ACRE STANDARD.
Fish processors are also not allowed to leave fish residue, such as foam or sludge, floating in marine waters.
To correct the problems, Icicle has invested $75,000 to extend its waste outfall pipe into deeper water where there's greater flushing, said Terry Leitzell, Icicle's general counsel. The company has also spent several thousand dollars to upgrade its fish-meal plant, he said, which converts wet fish waste into a dry product that can be used as plant fertilizer or fish food.
"We did a lot to mitigate this," Leitzell said.
Instead of pumping the waste into Resurrection Bay through a pipe, Icicle plans to turn half of its fish debris into dry meal, Grandinetti said. And the new outfall pipe now extends 1,350 feet, about a quarter mile, into Resurrection Bay, so the waste is going much farther out and into deep water. It used to extend only about 800 feet from the plant, he said.
The Clean Water Act sets size limits on underwater piles because the debris tends to smother marine life, such as snails, worms, mussels, crabs and other species that crawl around the sea floor. Besides seafood processors, the timber industry in Alaska also gets pollution permits for underwater piles because the companies sometimes store logs in the water and the bark sluffs off and sinks to the bottom.
The EPA has stepped up its enforcement of seafood processors over the past few years and plans to continue to do so, Grandinetti said. Alaska has about 250 seafood processors with federal pollution discharge permits.
"We've only really begun to look at them," he said. "It's not like we're cracking down on them. We're just taking a hard look at an industry that was not previously looked at very carefully," he said.
Icicle has no problem with the scrutiny, Leitzell said.
"It's part of the deal. If you're going to process fish, you have to do it right," he said.
Icicle operates seafood plants in many Alaska ports, stretching from Petersburg to Adak, he said.
The company reported revenue last year of $225 million, Leitzell said.
Daily News reporter Paula Dobbyn can be reached at pdobbyn@adn.com or 257-4317.
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