Unalaska, AK – The state reached a settlement agreement yesterday with the owners of the M/V Selendang Ayu. The IMC shipping company and Ayu Navigation will pay the state almost $845,000 to settle oil spill, wreck removal and lost fish tax claims. The 738-foot freighter went aground on Unalaska Island in December 2004 and spilled over 340,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil and 60,000 tons of soybeans. Six crew members died during the rescue efforts.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Breck Tostevin said the amount of the fine is based on a legal calculation.

"It's a forumula that's in statute and regulation depends on how much oil and where it goes and what kind of receiving environment it goes into. And there's a credit for how much oil is cleaned up by the company. So the state hired an oil spill modeling firm to figure out how much oil actually hit the beaches and how much clean up could be credited against the penalty."

The companies cleaned up 10,702 gallons of the 354,218 spilled. The Malaysian-flagged Selendang released oil onto beaches with marine mammal haulouts and into salmon streams. About 810 thousand dollars of the penalty will go into the state's oil and hazardous substance release mitigation account and 35 thousand goes toward a wreck and beach monitoring fund.

The Department of Natural Resources will continue to monitor the area of the wreckage in case other parts of the ship surface. The settlement includes $1 million dollar letter of undertaking from the companies that says they will remove anything that surfaces from the wreckage before August 30, 2015.

The City of Unalaska will receive $6,318 for lost fish taxes from the closed Tanner crab fishery.

Tostevin said the final settlement took four and half years to resolve because of oil spill studies and because Magone Marine only removed the last piece of the vessel last January.

The $845,000 penalty is in addition to the $100 million spent by the companies for the clean up, a $9 million federal criminal penalty and $2.5 million reimbursed to the state for it's clean up costs. Three million of the federal penalty is being used to develop a hazard mitigation plan for the Aleutians.