Cruise Line Fined $18 Million for Dumping Waste at Sea

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., one of the world’s largest cruise lines, has agreed to plead guilty to 21 felony charges and pay an $18-million fine for dumping waste oil and hazardous chemicals at sea and lying to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

In plea agreements filed in federal courts in six cities, including Los Angeles, Royal Caribbean acknowledged that it routinely dumped waste oil in some of the most environmentally sensitive waterways, including Alaska’s Inside Passage.

It also pleaded guilty to deliberately dumping hazardous chemicals from shipboard photo processing equipment, dry cleaning shops and printing presses in U.S. harbors and coastal areas.

“Royal Caribbean used our nation’s waters as its dumping ground even as it promoted itself as an environmentally ‘green’ company,” said Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

Royal Caribbean’s president, Jack Williams, blamed the wrongdoing on employees who “knowingly violated environmental laws and our own company policy. The majority of these violations reflect a lapse in our enforcement efforts--not a lapse in our corporate conscience or our commitment to protecting the ocean.”

The $18-million fine is the largest ever paid by a cruise line in connection with polluting U.S. waters, the Justice Department said.

Of the total, $3 million is to settle a Los Angeles case in which Royal Caribbean recently pleaded guilty. Officers aboard the cruise ship Nordic Prince were accused of falsifying logs to show that oily bilge water had been properly treated before being discharged.

The bogus logs were submitted to the Coast Guard for inspection three times in 1994. The Justice Department said some Royal Caribbean employees referred to the logs as Eventyrbok, which means fairy tale book in Norwegian.

Assistant U.S. Atty. William Carter, who prosecuted the Los Angeles case, said $1 million of the fine would be divided between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Channel Islands National Park for environmental protection programs.

Besides Los Angeles, the company entered plea agreements with the Justice Department in Miami, New York, Anchorage, St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Royal Caribbean has been embroiled in a long-running legal battle with the Justice Department over its waste-dumping practices.

In 1994, the Coast Guard caught Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas dumping waste off the coast of Puerto Rico. Royal Caribbean was subsequently indicted by federal grand juries in San Juan and Miami and pleaded guilty in June 1998 to illegal dumping and lying to the Coast Guard. The company paid a $9-million fine.

The charges announced Wednesday involve crimes committed since the 1994 episode by at least eight Royal Caribbean vessels, including Majesty of the Seas, Nordic Empress, Nordic Prince, Song of Norway, Sovereign of the Seas, Sun Viking, Monarch of the Seas and Grandeur of the Seas.

Royal Caribbean will operate for the next five years under a court-supervised environmental compliance program. It has also agreed to turn over the results of an internal investigation and assist the Justice Department in its prosecution of employees suspected of wrongdoing. Two Royal Caribbean engineers indicted in the 1994 case are fugitives.