On this Earth Day it is time to recognize an underutilized tool at the disposal of the United States government for cleaning up the ocean and preventing harmful pollution. Congress passed the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS) in 1980 in order to legally implement measures from the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (shortened to “MARPOL” for marine pollution). APPS implements provisions of the convention to the U.S. criminal code. As a result, American commercial vessels, and international commercial vessels that operate in U.S. waters or ports of U.S. jurisdiction are subject to the legal standards laid out in MARPOL. APPS makes it punishable by law for any of these vessels to release certain levels of substances which include oil, toxic materials, garbage, or air pollutants from a ships’ exhaust.
While vessels around the world pose a logistical challenge to law enforcement in their ability to hide illegal dumping, whistleblower provisions in APPS provide the exact tool needed to empower and incentivize crewmembers to speak up and hold violators accountable. According to the National Whistleblower Center, the whistleblower provisions in APPS have already made the United States the number one enforcer of MARPOL. Their analysis shows that of publicly available APPS prosecutions spanning 1993 to 2017, whistleblowers were responsible for 76% of successful enforcements. When successful, APPS fines have routinely cost violators...
The Trump administration’s fraud prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center is set for arraignment on Thursday afternoon. Ahead of the scheduled court appearance in Alabama, defense lawyers fo...