An oceangoing freighter that was detained in the Duluth harbor for six weeks in 2015 made its first trip back into the local port over the weekend.
Flying a different flag and presumed to be operating under a different owner, the Cornelia arrived Sunday and remained docked at the Holcim Trading Co. terminal at the end of Rice's Point on Monday. Holcim is an international cement supplier based in Switzerland.
The Cornelia was detained in Duluth late last year and its German owners were slapped with $1 million in penalties after pleading guilty to dumping oily wastewater into the Great Lakes.
The U.S. Coast Guard Ninth District, based in Cleveland, was responsible for detaining the ship and conducting the investigation. It said there was nothing out of the ordinary about the ship's return to the Great Lakes.
"Business as usual," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Christopher Yaw. "As far as anything that happened last year, it was investigated. It would be similar to if a ship ran aground, went through the process to get repairs and made it back."
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The Cornelia flew the flag of the South Pacific's Cook Islands into port this time, having previously been a Liberian-flagged ship. The ship no longer appears on the fleet list of the German company that owned it and pleaded guilty in July in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, MST Mineralien Schiffahrt.
The Coast Guard held the Cornelia, with its captain and crew aboard, at anchor in the harbor, just out from 27th Avenue East, from early November until Dec. 18, when it finally was allowed to depart.
According to the news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Minnesota district in July, the Cornelia's crew discharged oily wastewater overboard at least 10 times from February to October 2015, and its chief engineer intentionally failed to record the discharges in its record book. That included at least one incident while the vessel was in the Great Lakes. The guilty plea was to violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships.
Attempts to reach Holcim and the local vessel agent, Guthrie-Hubner, to discuss the Cornelia's return were unsuccessful.
