United States Seafoods (USS) owns a fleet of fishing vessels that operate in the Gulf of Alaska. The home port is in Seattle, Washington. On 11/8/2017, the United States filed a complaint to allege two violations of the CFC Recycling and Emission Reduction rules in 40 C.F.R. Part 82, Subpart F. On the same day, the United States lodged a Consent Decree to resolve the alleged violations. USS agreed to pay a civil penalty of $135,000; to retrofit the CFC industrial process refrigeration (IPR) units in the boats in its fleet with ammonia-based IPR units; to conduct training on refrigerant management; to undertake certain work practices; and to retain an approved Third Party Verifier to monitor USS's leak detection and repair practices and to review USS's records required by 40 C.F.R. Part 82, Subpart F.
Modification to Consent Decree entered 12/27/2018-defendant will not need to retrofit the Legacy until 2020, at which time they will likely retire the vessel. In exchange, they agree to retrofit two of their smaller vessels in 2018 and to accelerate the overall retrofitting schedule from 2022 to 2021.