Search warrant served in Kodiak

A Kodiak organization representing the trawl industry says Alaska Wildlife Troopers this week served a search warrant at its downtown office.

Electronics including the the executive director's laptop and cell phone were seized, the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank (AGDB) said in an "urgent update" sent Wednesday to the organization's members.

A spokesman for the Alaska Wildlife Troopers today said the agency was working on a media statement regarding the matter. The Alaska Groundfish Data Bank has represented Gulf of Alaska shoreside trawl catcher vessels and processors since 1986, the organization's website says.

The investigation doesn't appear to be focused on AGDB per se. Rather, the search is believed to be part of a broader investigation into the disposition of "prohibited species catch" such as salmon and halibut. These fish are taken as bycatch in trawl groundfish fisheries and can't be sold.

AGDB's executive director, Julie Bonney, in October testified before the North Pacific Fishery Management Council regarding a recent change of management policy to bar turning prohibited species catch into fishmeal.

Such fish now are hauled from processing plants to sea and dumped.

"AGDB does not have anything to hide, so it's extremely unfortunate that authorities have chose to take this route," the member update said.

Trident to pay $2.5 million, build fishmeal plant at Bristol Bay to settle pollution violations with EPA

From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:

Sept. 28, 2011

Trident Seafoods Corp. to pay $2.5 million to resolve Clean Water Act violations and spend more than $30 million to upgrade processing plants

Settlement to reduce discharges of seafood processing waste by more than 100 million pounds annually

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice today announced that Trident Seafoods Corp., one of the world's largest seafood processors, has agreed to pay a $2.5 million civil penalty and invest millions in seafood processing waste controls to settle alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.

Unauthorized discharges of seafood processing waste lead to large seafood waste piles on the seafloor, creating anoxic, or oxygen-depleted, conditions that result in unsuitable habitats for fish and other living organisms.

"Today's settlement signals an important change in how seafood processing is managed in Alaska," said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. "Trident's investment in fishmeal facilities and commitment to improving its waste management practices will help protect our nation's waters and set the standard for Alaska's seafood processing industry."

"This agreement will benefit the quality of Alaskan waters, which host a critical habitat for the seafood industry," said Ignacia S. Moreno, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. "The upgrades will enable Trident to achieve and maintain compliance with the Clean Water Act, and will protect Alaskan waters, eliminate waste and create efficiencies that will serve as a model of best business practices for the seafood processing industry."

The agreement requires Trident to invest an estimated $30-40 million, and potentially more, in source control and waste pile remediation measures. The source control measures include building a fishmeal plant in Naknek that will have the capacity to handle at least 30 million pounds of seafood processing waste annually, taking in both its own fish waste and potentially that of other local processors.

Trident has also agreed to reduce the amount of seafood processing waste discharged from the Akutan, Cordova, St. Paul and Ketchikan facilities and monitor the amount of seafood processing waste discharged into Starrigavan Bay in Sitka. The actions taken will reduce Trident's fish processing discharges by a total of more than 105 million pounds annually.

The company has also agreed to remediation measures including studying seafloor waste piles at Trident's facilities in Akutan, Ketchikan and Cordova. Based on the results of these studies, Trident will remove or partially remediate the piles. One seafood processing waste pile in Akutan Harbor is currently estimated to be more than 50 acres in size.

The EPA complaint, also filed as part of this legal action, alleges that Trident had more than 480 Clean Water Act violations at 14 of its onshore and offshore Alaskan seafood processing facilities. The alleged violations include discharging without a necessary permit, exceeding discharge limits, failing to comply with permit restrictions on discharge locations (including discharges into at least two national wildlife refuges), and creating oxygen-depleting "zones of deposit" or underwater piles of fish processing waste occupying more than the allowed one acre of seafloor. The company also allegedly failed to conduct required monitoring and implement required best management practices.

Over the past decade, Trident has been a party to multiple administrative enforcement agreements and judicial consent decrees resolving similar violations at many of the same facilities.

The settlement was lodged in federal court in Seattle, Wash., and is subject to a 30-day public comment period.

For more information on the settlement and a copy of the consent decree, click here.

A quick update

The board of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority today again tabled the SMOG deal.

Wish I could tell you more, but Deckboss was unable to attend the meeting.

Does this SMOG deal smell right?

The board of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state lending agency, is scheduled to hear a pitch on Thursday from a company called SMOG LLC.

SMOG is an unappetizing acronym for the Sitka Meal, Oil and Gelatin Co.

The company wants to start a plant at Sitka to process fish waste into goods such as aquaculture and pet feed and human nutritional products.

And it wants the state agency, AIDEA, to finance and own the plant — a project that will cost more than $9 million, agency documents show.

Fish waste, of course, is a monumental headache for Alaska's seafood industry. In many cases, the only option is to grind up the fish heads, frames and guts and pipe the gurry offshore.

SMOG wants to dry and process the waste into marketable products.

It's not the first time fish waste has been processed into something usable, such as fishmeal.

But SMOG has a "new method" to better stabilize the waste, to dry it faster and to extract products higher in nutrients and thus more valuable, AIDEA says.

This newfangled Sitka plant has the support of seafood processors such as Icicle, Ocean Beauty and North Pacific Seafoods, who say they're under pressure from regulators such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to find a better way to deal with fish offal.

But SMOG's technology apparently has never been tried on a commercial scale. AIDEA board members, at a meeting on March 2, had lots of questions regarding feasibility, and ultimately tabled a funding request until the next meeting.

SMOG initially seeks $450,000 from AIDEA for engineering, legal work and other steps necessary to bring the project back to the board for final consideration.

Under a proposed "user agreement," SMOG is obligated to reimburse AIDEA if either party decides to back out of the project.

"However, due to the fact that SMOG has limited financial capacity to reimburse AIDEA's expenditures, there is a substantial risk that if the project terminated, AIDEA will not be able to recover its investment," an agency memo says.

The AIDEA staff, however, seems sold on the project.

Read the agency memo and letters of support from processors here.

SMOG's organizer is Peter J. Stitzel of Seattle, state records show. Stitzel or other SMOG representatives are scheduled to give a presentation to the AIDEA board on Thursday.

Of course, AIDEA might well proceed with caution when it comes to "value-added" fishery projects.

The agency ended up with an embarrassing white elephant after a Anchorage venture called Alaska Seafood International went bust in 2003. AIDEA was landlord for the $50 million, state-owned processing plant, which today serves as a church.