A Seattle-based seafood company has agreed to pay a $430,000 settlement for violating the Clean Air Act.
Icicle Seafoods harvests and sells salmon, crab, pollock and other fish from the waters of the Northwest and Alaska.
And one of the key components of bringing seafood to market is a refrigerant known as R-22.
It’s a substance used to keep refrigerators cold on vessels and storage and processing facilities. R-22 is being phased out because it depletes the ozone layer.
But between 2006 and 2008 Icicle Seafoods didn’t keep its refrigerators in good working order, and R-22 leaked, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We got a tip that potentially there was a problem here,” says Katie McClintock, a compliance officer with the EPA in Seattle. “We saw that they had leaks where they added large amounts of refrigerant and didn’t fix the problem within the time they were required to.”
The refrigerant goes into the upper atmosphere and destroys the ozone layer.
Icicle Seafoods has agreed to pay the fine and repair leaks in vessels and processing facilities.
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