Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCCL) and its Chief Engineer Henry Ericksen and First Engineer Svenn Rikard Roeymo have been indicted by a federal grand jury in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for conspiring to dump oil into U.S. waters and for ignoring proper procedures regarding record keeping and the discharge of bilge water. When this report became public, the company's stock dropped 75 cents to $23.875 on the New York Stock Exchange.
The charges are the result of an investigation that was initiated in 1994 when the Coast Guard suspected that the crew of Sovereign of the Seas was dumping oil overboard instead of discharging waste at port facilities. The investigation extended to five of the company's ships, where similar practices were allegedly being carried out.
The U.S. Justice Department alleges that RCCL engineers either misused bilge systems or fashioned bypass systems to circumvent their purpose, that crew members failed to make required entries or made false entries into vessel record books, and that RCCL's employees compounded the situation by lying about the incidents at the start of an investigation in an attempt to stage a cover up.
In a statement broadcast over the wire services, the company offered: "Quite simply, any violation of environmental regulation by any of Royal Caribbean's 10,000 employees is of serious concern to the company and is absolutely not acceptable. The company acknowledges that no environmental program, including ones which exceed requirements, can excuse or counter balance a single violation."
Since being made aware of possible pollution liabilities, RCCL responded by creating an executive position in "Quality Assurance," and shipboard "environmental enforcement" positions, and reportedly upgraded pollution control equipment and "checked, re-checked and improved every element of its environmental program."
Ironically, classification society Det Norske Veritas recently awarded a SEP (Safety and Environmental Protection) certificate recognizing the company's environmental practices as exceeding that required by law. In October, RCCL CEO Richard Fain announced the formation of a charitable fund to donate $1 million over the next three years to ocean protection efforts, and the first grant of $50,000 was given to the Center for Marine Conservation (CMC) at a press conference in New York City
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