Nautilus Foods Stops Fish Processing in Valdez

Nautilus Foods Stops Fish Processing in Valdez
By Lee Revis
Editor, Valdez Star
VALDEZ- The Valdez City Council extended the leases of city land that are currently held by Seahawk, the now defunct seafood processor on North Harbor Drive but failed to even discuss the approval of a request to allow a sub-lease of the land to Nautilus Foods, which had hoped to move their primary fish processing operations to the idle plant.
"We will move our jobs and operations to Seward," an abject and angry Tom Waterer, owner of Nautilus Foods, said after the council's failure to act. Claiming that without the sublease, where the dorms and a dock access are located, there is no way to effectively house workers to run the plant or offload fish from fishing tenders. "It tears my heart out to do this," he bemoaned. "We lost it because of the city."
Waterer claims that he had projections of processing over a million pounds of pink salmon over the next few weeks, as fisherman take advantage of what could be a record run of pink salmon in Valdez this year.
According to Waterer, Nautilus was poised to pay out close to two million dollars in labor alone this year. "The issue is we would have handled 10 million fish off of this run alone," he said.
As of Tuesday morning of this week, Waterer says the company had moved out 25 workers to Seward and are bringing in another 25 to the plant there, Polar Seafoods, which will process fish for Nautilus. "We're working there as we speak," he said.
Waterer spent much of last spring working on a deal to purchase the Seahawk plant from his former rival, Terry Bertoson, which would allow Nautilus to continue its processing operations in Valdez after the lease of the plant on the city dock expires in the spring of 2007. The deal quickly ran into trouble when Fire Chief George Keeney red tagged parts of the plant's ammonia and drainage systems. Then the city met in several Executive Sessions to discuss the possible purchase of the Seahawk Plant, which they eventually declined to do.
With Waterer pulling out the lion's share of his operation, he is leaving two employees in town to oversee issues with the Nautilus Plant located on the City Dock, Valdez is down to only one seafood processor, Peter Pan.
The city and Waterer have been butting heads for most of the 22 years that Waterer has leased the building on the City Dock. Numerous lawsuits, threats and bad blood have played out in the public forum on numerous issues between the two.
In the last 22 years, Waterer says he has paid out over $20 million in salaries, and many more millions in fish purchases, fuel, housing and incidental expenses, all in the short fish season in Valdez.