Pollution Forces Tuna Plant To Spend, Delay Opening
Scheduled to open at the end of last year, the tuna plant managed by Pan Pacific Foods, a subsidiary of Shanghai Deep Sea Fisheries Company, has faced a series of delays in starting operations in this remote western Pacific island group.
The plant needs large volumes of fresh water for its fish processing operations, and planned to use salt water from close to shore next to the plant to filter through its reverse osmosis (RO) fresh water making units.
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But sewage contaminated seawater close to the ocean side plant has forced the company back to the drawing board to design and construct a deep-water collection system to get less contaminated water. The plant is now set to open in late April.
“To get quality water, we¹ve had to spend $600,000 extra,” plant general manager Don Xu said Friday. “We’ve also wasted three months’ time” to study the problem, get new equipment ordered, delivered and installed.”
Underwater surveys undertaken earlier this month by both Pan Pacific Foods and Majuro Water and Sewer Company show the sewage outfall pipe is broken and clogged with rocks, with raw sewage spewing out closer to shore than the original design allowed. The outfall pipe is located about 200 meters up current from the plant.
Xu said that a study prepared for the company showed that E. coli pollution in ocean water outside the plant is 90 times higher than the legal limit. While the RO units will filter everything out, this level of pollution creates both a perception and practical problem for the food processing facility.
Utility general manager William Roberts said the water company is now deciding whether temporary repairs can be made, “though in the long-term we will be looking for funding to completely replace the pipe.”
Marshall Islands Environmental Protection Authority water quality chief Abraham Hicking said that this is “not a new problem. It’s just that nobody raised the issue earlier.” Still, “we want to lower the E. coli level there,” Hicking said.
Despite relatively low wages the plant will pay—the government has approved $1.50 per hour, 50 cents below the national minimum wage—the plant has been deluged with applicants in this country that has an unemployment rate of over 30 percent. Xu said that 700 Marshall Islanders have already applied for the initial 300 jobs that will open when the plant starts in April.
Shanghai Deep Sea Fisheries Company has invested nearly $10 million in the plant since it began construction work in January 2007, Xu said.
The Majuro plant will filet, cook and freeze tuna ‘loins’ and then ship them offshore for canning at Asian or other canneries. An American company ran a similar, but smaller, tuna processing plant in Majuro that went bankrupt in 2004.
Xu said that once the plant gets into full operation later this year, employment of Marshall Islanders will rise to more than 600—a number that is about five percent of the total private sector workforce in the country.
