Workplace fines totaling $208,983 for a small Alaskan seafood company will stand, as the owner did not cooperate with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an administrative law judge ruled Tuesday.
East West Seafoods LLC of Kodiak, Alaska, received a total of 22 serious, two repeat and one other-than-serious violations after OSHA inspectors found that crew members were being served expired food and that water being used to process fish was leaking into dry storage and the boat’s dining area.
Inspectors also found various electrical hazards aboard the vessel, such as ungrounded extension cords and exposed wiring, damaged and improperly installed electrical equipment, broken outlets and outlets near water, and a lack of fire suppression equipment.
The owner, who contested the OSHA citations, failed to follow up with the agency’s procedures, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission administrative law judge wrote. The company sent correspondence to OSHA, stating that it “does not have any money at all,” according to the judge’s ruling.
The company was cited over similar issues in 2012, 2014 and 2018, and in 2017 a federal judge sentenced the company and owner Christos Tsabouris to five years of probation and $50,000 in fines in connection with the intentional discharge of oily bilge water and 1,000 gallons of raw sewage into the ocean about three miles off the Alaskan coast and the submission of false records to the U.S. Coast Guard, according to OSHA.