On a trip early in 2021, chief engineer Kirill Kompaniets oversaw the engine department on board the Gannet Bulker. The boat was anchored on March 13 in U.S. territorial waters in Southwest Pass.
The engineers took advantage of the crew’s issues with the ballast water treatment system (BWTS) to fix several broken valves on the machinery. When the crew attempted to partly check one of the valves, it malfunctioned, leaking water into the engine room where it combined with oily waste in the bilges. When Kompaniets and a fellow crew member used an emergency fire pump to release nearly 10,000 gallons of untreated bilge water over the side that evening, they failed to notify the U.S. Coast Guard of the situation.
The discharge was reported to the U.S. Coast Guard by a Gannet Bulker crew member. Kompaniets gave orders to his subordinates to make up a tale and clean the bilges before marine inspectors arrived to speak with the crew and inspect the ship. In addition, he made a bogus entry in the oil record book that concealed the full nature of the valve failure occurrence and ordered the deletion of the alarm printout for automatically logged equipment alerts for the time of the discharge. He said that the unlawful discharge had been carried out at the master’s direction. In May, Kompaniets entered a plea of guilty to two felony pollution counts and acknowledged telling the truth about what happened on board.
According to Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, “The purposeful contamination of U.S. waterways and the willful attempt to cover up the crime are highly serious criminal violations that will not be allowed.” “Prosecutions like this one should send a strong message to anyone who would break the law and jeopardize our priceless natural resources,” the prosecutor said. Kompaniets was given a year and a day in jail, a $5,000 fine, and six months of supervised release on Wednesday by Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown. The event is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation.
