A Mexican ship management company has been fined $1.75m in the US and put on probation for a felony violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS).

The company pleaded guilty and was sentenced on October 30 in federal district court in Pensacola, Florida, for creating and providing false records to the U.S. Coast Guard to conceal its illegal discharge of oily bilge waste into the ocean, the US Justice department said.

The court sentenced the company to pay a $1.75m fine, serve a four-year term of probation and commit to developing and implementing an environmental compliance plan that will be in effect during the time the company is on probation.

The charge stems from a Coast Guard investigation of the ship once it arrived in Pensacola on August 25, 2023. The ship is a 7,602 gross ton Panamanian-flagged ocean-going bulk carrier that routinely hauled cement from Tampico, Mexico, to Pensacola.

After boarding the ship to determine compliance with all applicable laws, Coast Guard personnel determined that the vessel’s crew had regularly discharged untreated oily bilge water into sea in a manner that bypassed onboard pollution control equipment and then allegedly falsified the ship’s oil record book, the US justice department said, to conceal these discharges.

As part of normal vessel operations, large ocean-going ships generate oily bilge water that periodically needs to be discharged for the vessel to operate safely. The United States and Panama are both parties to an international treaty known as MARPOL, which regulates and limits the at-sea discharge of oily bilge water.

To satisfy these marine pollution requirements, vessels typically discharge oily bilge water after it has been processed through an oily water separator, a piece of onboard pollution control equipment which removes oil from bilge water prior to discharge.

Ships are required to maintain an oil record book that documents all discharges of oily bilge water so authorities can monitor ships for compliance with these international requirements.

Federal law requires that foreign ships arriving at U.S. ports maintain an accurate oil record book.