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For cruise lines, justice rests heavy on stomach
© St. Petersburg Times This past April, Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise ship operator, pleaded guilty in federal court to dumping oily waste from the bilge tanks of its ships that had departed from Florida's ports. Carnival dumped in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. The crews of six ships -- Sensation, Ecstasy, Fantasy, Imagination, Paradise and Tropicale -- deliberately fooled the detection equipment. They kept false records too. Carnival agreed to pay $18-million. That's nothin', though. Carnival's largest rival, Royal Caribbean, was caught twice. In June 1998, the cruise line admitted that nine of its ships had rigged pipes to bypass anti-pollution equipment. The ships' logbooks were so completely faked that company engineers called them by the Norwegian word "eventyrbok," which means, "fairy tale book." The company also dumped dry-cleaning chemicals and other toxic wastes into the waters off Florida, Alaska and Puerto Rico. Of course, Royal Caribbean promised it would never happen again. Then it happened again the next month. A Royal Caribbean liner, the Nordic Express, was caught discharging oily waste and creating false records to cover it up. More cruise ships depart from Florida than any other state. Last year, the U.S. Coast Guard reported that cruise ships had polluted Florida waters at least 60 times over the previous nine years. At long last! We are No. 1 at something. The runner-up was Alaska, with a puny 26. The Coast Guard said that oil, hydraulic fluid, plastic and other cruise ship pollutants often wind up in U.S. waterways. In 1993, the now-defunct Regency Cruises of Tampa was fined $250,000 for dumping dozens of garbage-filled plastic bags into the Gulf of Mexico about 36 miles off St. Pete Beach and, separately, 29 miles off Bradenton. Just this April, according to the New York Times, a coalition of four West Coast environmental organizations sued in California to force the industry to comply with a 1999 state law than bans the dumping of ballast water within 3 miles of the state's coast. In May in Washington, D.C., the group Ocean Conservancy released a report accusing the industry of generating more than 400-million pounds of waste annually and dumping much of it into the ocean. In September, Carnival Cruise Lines' former top environmental compliance officer sued the company's corporate parent, saying he was fired after trying to fight safety violations, and for testifying truthfully against the company in federal court. It would be nice to report to you that Florida, which has the most to lose from environmental damage, would have the strongest regulations in place. But the opposite is true. In fact, Florida is the only state that has embraced the cruise industry's own guidelines for monitoring ship waste. What's more, when somebody proposed a cruise-ship tax two years ago, Gov. Jeb Bush's threat of a veto stopped the idea cold. Gratefully, the industry's trade group -- the Cruise Industry Community Fund -- gave $500,000 to the Republican Party of Florida. The industry thus became the party's single biggest donor for the year. On the federal level, a New York Times investigation found that the 17 largest cruise lines pay virtually no corporate income taxes, even though all are based in the United States. Protected by powerful lobbyists, they do business under a decades-old loophole in the federal tax code. Only grudgingly, and after a high-profile rape case, did the cruise industry agree in 1999 that crimes committed on its ships needed to be reported to onshore law enforcement. The industry also fought in court until the bitter end to resist having to obey the Americans With Disabilities Act. My point in mentioning these things is not to express satisfaction that more than 1,000 passengers on cruise ships have become sick in recent weeks. No one deserves that. Neither am I blaming the cruise industry entirely for the outbreaks -- in a crowded environment, the spread of the virus is caused just as much the failure of people to wash their own darned hands. All I'm saying is, there is such a thing as karma. What goes around, comes around.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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