$17,000 fine upheld for Allagash van crash

AUGUSTA – A federal review board has upheld a maximum $17,000 fine against a farm labor contractor who hired 14 migrant workers who were killed in Maine’s worst-ever highway accident in 2002, the U.S. Labor Department said Wednesday.

Evergreen Forestry Services of Sandpoint, Idaho, and its owner, Peter Smith III, had contested the fine by the department’s Wage and Hour Division after the September 2002 accident in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in northern Maine.

In the accident, a 15-passenger van rolled over at a bridge, and 14 forest-worker passengers drowned. One passenger survived.

Labor officials charged Evergreen and Smith with failing to provide safe transportation for the workers and failing to properly register the van, among other violations. Appeals were filed, but the department said that its administrative review board has upheld the penalty.