Carnival charged with more probation violations stemming from 2016 conviction
Carnival Corporation was back in federal court in downtown Miami Wednesday to face three new charges that it violated probation.
The new charges relate to discharging plastic into Bahamian waters and communicating with the U.S. Coast Guard through a back channel. Details about the third incident were not disclosed. The charges stem from the company’s second year on probation for its 2016 conviction for environmental crimes.
Carnival Corp. has acknowledged the incidents but stressed that they were not intentional.
The company has been on probation since April 2017 as part of a $40 million settlement for dumping oily waste into the ocean from its Princess Cruise Line ships for eight years and covering it up. It was Carnival Corp.’s third conviction for the same crime since 1998.
According to the monitor, the company has invested in more environmental compliance training across its 105 ships and its employees have been cooperative with the probation process. Carnival’s new attorney, David Oscar Markus, said Wednesday the company is reviewing the new charges and will continue to work with the Justice Department, the monitor and the judge.
“We are taking this very seriously and we are committed to the environment and making continued improvements across the company,” he said.
In March, the probation officer first alerted U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Seitz that Carnival Corp. had violated its probation, citing incidents from the company’s first year on probation of falsifying records, failing to give enough authority to the company’s environmental compliance officer, and improperly preparing ships ahead of visits by a court-appointed monitor.
The new charges were unveiled in court Wednesday. The probation officer said the company sought to avoid the obligations of its plea agreement when Retired Rear Admiral Joseph Servidio, Holland America Group’s senior vice president for safety, environmental & management services, emailed his former colleagues at the Coast Guard in June 2018 seeking support for Carnival’s definition of the terms of probation.
The probation officer also cited a December 2018 incident, when monitors notified the Carnival Elation environmental officer that plastic straws, plastic wrap, aluminum butter wrappers, wooden stir sticks and other items were mixed in with food waste, and that discharging it combined would be illegal. Despite that warning, the ship dumped the combined food waste and plastics into Bahamian waters on Dec. 16, 2018.
In addition to the incidents cited by the judge in court Wednesday, the court-appointed monitor has found hundreds of environmental violations on ships across Carnival Corp.’s nine cruise lines during the company’s first two years on probation.
The Bahamian government said last week it is investigating Carnival Corp.’s dumping of more than 500,000 gallons of treated sewage into its waters in 2017. The National Park Service in Alaska said it is “monitoring the situation with the potential to take actions as appropriate” after Holland America’s Westerdam ship dumped 26,000 gallons of gray water into Glacier Bay National Park in September 2018; despite the incident, NPS announced in March it intends to give Carnival Corp. a permit to continue sailing in Glacier Bay for the next 10 years.
Judge Seitz will decide at a hearing in June whether Carnival Corp. has violated its probation and whether to sanction the company. She requested that Carnival Corp.’s chairman, Micky Arison, and president, Arnold Donald, attend the hearing and threatened to temporarily block Carnival Corp. ships from docking at U.S. ports.
In court filings, attorneys for the company say they are working with prosecutors on a resolution to avoid the June hearing.
This story was originally published May 1, 2019 at 7:33 PM.
