When state conservation officials learned last week that Princess Cruise Lines agreed to plead guilty to a systematic cover-up of its policy to dump waste into the ocean, they rushed to their record books to determine whether any ships involved had sailed in Alaskan waters.
Their concern was well-placed: In 1999, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. agreed to plead guilty to seven felony counts and pay $6.5 million in fines for environmental crimes in Alaska between 1994 and 1995, when it “routinely” pumped an estimated 70 gallons of dry-cleaning and photo-processing chemicals into coastal waters between Haines and Skagway.
Four of five vessels involved in last week’s Princess Cruise Lines settlement – Grand Princess, Star Princess, Coral Princess and Golden Princess – traveled to Alaska during an eight-year time frame for which the California-based cruise giant agreed to seven felony charges and to pay a $40 million penalty.
And one, the Grand Princess, stopped in Haines.
Yet none of the illegal practices cited by federal authorities took place here, officials said.
“The first thing we did was go through all of our old photos and records to see if there was anything we missed or that did not get reported,” said Ed White, an environmental program specialist with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
White is a coordinator for the state’s Ocean Ranger program, in which licensed marine engineers travel onboard cruise ships in Alaska to monitor compliance with state and federal requirements pertaining to marine discharge, pollution and sanitation.
In 2016, all large cruise ships in Alaskan waters had at least one inspection by an Ocean Ranger, who monitored records and checked for such violations as oil discharge, oily water separator use and mixing bilge water and wastewater, state records show.
“We have people who inspect these ships,” White said. “So we think these kinds of violations are less likely to occur here.”
The investigation into illegal practices by Princess Cruise Lines centers on the 3,192-passenger Caribbean Princess, which for eight years allegedly used a “magic pipe” to bypass onboard equipment and illegally dump thousands of gallons of oily waste into the ocean.
Instead of being dumped into the ocean, oily bilge waste from a ship’s engines and fuel systems is supposed to be offloaded when a cruise ship arrives in port and either disposed in an incinerator or buried in a waste facility. Bilge water can be discharged into the ocean only after all oil is separated out.
The practices by the Caribbean Princess were reported by an engineer who later quit his job. He told investigators that the ship removed the “magic pipe” before its mandatory inspection.
The cruise line blamed what it called “rogue” engineers. In a statement, Princess said it was “extremely disappointed” that employees violated company policy and federal law regarding the discharge of pollutants.
White said it was unclear what specific chemicals were dumped by the Princess Cruise Lines ship but he said prior to new federal Environmental Protection Agency standards passed in 2013, cruise lines sometimes added into gray water such toxic substances as cleaning fluids and other oily sludge.
The mid-1990s illegal dumping near Haines, conducted by RCCL ships Nordic Prince, Sun Viking and Legend of the Seas, included 500,000 gallons of gray water per vessel on a one-week voyage. The dumps were made at midnight, under the cover of darkness, and bypassed the ships’ oil-water separator.
The ships “discharged the toxic heavy metal silver, perchlororethylene and other chemicals through the gray water system directly into the waters of Alaska each and every week the vessels sailed to Alaska in 1994 and 1995,” according to a federal court statement of facts filed at the time.
Leslie Ross, tourism director for the Haines Convention and Visitors Bureau, said that Grand Princess stopped in Haines this year and will do so in 2017. She stressed that most of the illegal dumping cited last week by federal officials occurred on one ship and not on an Alaska-going vessel.
“It is disappointing and it is not good for the industry,” Ross said of news of the most recent cruise line dumping. “It does appear that Princess has already taken steps to make sure this does not happen again.”
But one environmentalist isn’t so ready to forgive the cruise ship industry.
“It’s appalling that after the PR fiasco the cruise line industry created for themselves in the 1990s that they were actually caught in the practice of purposeful dumping of toxic waste into public waters,” said Gershon Cohen, project director for the Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters.
“When they’ve been caught numerous times before, they’ve always said ‘It will never happen again.’ Now, this time, when they tell us that it will never happen again, what do we say?”
Cohen, who lives in Haines, said cruise lines save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by-passing pollution equipment – including staff time, expensive filters and the high cost of disposing of hazardous waste onshore.
“If it’s not worth the risk financially of getting caught, why would they do it?” he said. “They’re all about the bottom line. There must be a profit somewhere. The companies entered into a settlement with the government so we’ll probably never know the extent of what was really going on.”
Cohen, a former microbiologist, was instrumental in the passing of the 2006 cruise ship initiative by a public-ballot measure that was bitterly opposed by the cruise ships. The measure established a permit system for cruise ships in Alaska and helped set up the Ocean Ranger program.
Even after the passage of the initiative, the industry continued to lobby against “astronomical” costs they incurred from the new law. They were especially incensed over the initiative’s $46-per-passenger fee, challenging the requirement in federal court.
Former Republican Gov. Sean Parnell later blunted the teeth of the cruise ship initiative. As a result, the program budget has been reduced and the Ocean Ranger coverage decreased, Cohen said.
In 1999, weeks after the cruise ship dumping near Haines came to light, 50 residents turned up to protest the illegal acts, holding up signs and handing out fliers to tourists who walked off the Rhapsody of the Seas. Later, the ship’s owner pulled out of Haines for good. Many locals blamed the protests, but Cohen said the ultra-rich cruise ship industry is immune to protests and even fines.
“They take it off their taxes,” he said. “They write it off as a loss. It doesn’t cost them anything.”
Haines fisherman J.R. Churchill said he wasn’t surprised that the cruise line industry was again caught polluting public waters even after its troubles in the mid-1990s.
Churchill, who moors his 32-foot gillnetter Red Dog in the Haines harbor, questioned why the moorage rates for small businessmen like himself were creeping up while the cruise ships were given reduced rates as a way to attract them to Haines.
“If you’re in the cruise ship industry, this is a beautiful thing,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re not very happy. That money has to come from somewhere. If not the tour ships, then it’s the local taxpayers.”