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Tugboat engineers accused of polluting Lake Huron


7/19/2016   

Absorbent diapers, a garden hose and a blue bucket were just some of the tools used in a scheme to dump oily bilge water from a Great Lakes tugboat into Lake Huron, causing a slick spotted from the air that was twice the length of a football field.
 
And now, two engineers from the tug Victory are accused of conspiring to discharge the oil-contaminated water into Lake Huron and other areas of the Great Lakes. They're also accused of releasing the dirty water at night to make it difficult to detect the resulting sheen.
 
According to a federal grand jury indictment handed up last month, Jeffrey Patrick, chief engineer aboard the Victory, and William Harrigan, first assistant engineer, allegedly released the oily water into Lake Huron from mid-May 2014 through the end of that June. The indictment does not say when or where other discharges occurred.