Biggest U.S. oil-tanker company slapped with $37 million in dumping fines
They would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling pipe fitters: the nation’s largest oil-tanker company, Overseas Shipholding Group, will pay $37 million for gooping up U.S. seas. For nearly five years, the company’s ships dumped waste oil and sludge off the coasts of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Beaumont, Texas, Wilmington, N.C., and Portland, Maine. They covered up by fudging logbooks, building bypass pipes, flushing oil sensors with fresh water, and doing the dirty deeds at night. But there’s still honor left in this world, and 12 whistleblowers called OSG on their practices. The result: a $10 million fine in the Texas case and a $27 million fine for the rest, including $437,500 for each whistleblower — altogether, the largest-ever deliberate-pollution-by-an-ocean-vessel settlement. “There should be no tolerance for those who deliberately despoil the environment,” said judge Reginald Lindsay, and OSG said it’s “working very hard to ensure this never happens again.”
