Second Cruise Line Settles

Second FOC Cruise Line Settles Rape Charge, Fined $18 Million For Pollution Of U.S. Waters

      The world's second largest cruise line will pay an $18 million settlement to resolve criminal charges that it dumped chemical waste in U.S. waters and lied to U.S. authorities investigating the incidents.
     The fine resulted from admissions by the company that it had dumped toxic waste- including oil, dry cleaning chemicals and photo processing chemicals-in coastal waters from Alaska to the U.S. Virgin Islands.
      "Royal Caribbean used our nation's waters as its dumping ground, even as it promoted itself as an environmentally 'green' company," said Attorney General Janet Reno in announcing the settlement.
     Royal Caribbean Cruises is based in the U.S. but incorporated in a foreign nation. Its vessels are registered under flags of convenience.
     Royal Caribbean's guilty plea covers 21 felony charges, which range from making false statements to U.S. Coast Guard investigators to violation of the Clean Water Act.
     The settlement was reached in late July. At that time, Royal Caribbean Cruises also settled a rape case, involving allegations that one of its male crewmembers raped a 15-year-old male passenger after plying him with champagne on New Year's Eve 1998. The company settled the case under the condition of confidentiality.
     In the criminal case, the incidents to which the company pled guilty included:

Dumping photo and dry-cleaning waste in the Port of New York from the Song of America in 1994 and 1995, and lying to the Coast Guard regarding the incidents in 1994
Dumping of waste oil, photo and dry-cleaning waste into the environmentally sensitive Inside Passage and Port of Juneau in 1994 and 1995 from the Nordic Prince, Sun Viking and Legend of the Sea
Dumping photo and dry-cleaning waste in the Port of Miami from Grandeur of the Seas in 1995 and 1996
Dumping photo and dry-cleaning waste into the Port of St. Croix from the Grandeur of the Seas in 1994 and 1995, and lying to the Coast Guard regarding the incidents in 1997

     The $18 million settlement was not Royal Caribbean's first brush with U.S. environmental law.
     In September 1998, the cruise line pleaded guilty to a fleet-wide conspiracy to dump oil into U.S. waters and was hit with a $9 million fine. As part of the guilty plea, the company admitted to lying to the U.S. Coast Guard during a pollution probe, destroying evidence to conceal dumping activities and ordering one of its engineers to lie to a federal grand jury.
     Among the items concealed by Royal Caribbean employees were bypass pipes installed aboard several of the company's vessels. These pipes allowed the ships to pump untreated oil and contaminated water directly into the ocean while bypassing the usual shipboard separators and filtering systems.
     The investigation into Royal Caribbean's waste disposal practices began in 1994, when the Coast Guard discovered that one of the company's vessels was discharging oil off the coast of Puerto Rico.
     Prior to that, on Feb. 1, 1993, a Coast Guard crew videotaped the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Nordic Empress discharging pollutants into the ocean off the Florida coast.

Front Page

Return To Section-Front