Two out-of-state companies and two individuals face criminal charges for trying to sell more than 800,000 pounds of rotting salmon during a disastrous attempt at running a Bristol Bay processing plant in 2004, state prosecutors said this week.

Jeremy Oliver, 36, of Washington managed the processing plant at Ekuk near Dillingham. It was "an environmental and economic catastrophe," according to state charging documents.

Oliver worked for Wild Alaskan Seafood Co. of Washington.

Jay Enis of Florida managed Strategica Import-Export Financial Group, the company that financed and controlled the plant, documents say.

The two companies and both men face the same five misdemeanor charges, including mishandling salmon, processing rotting salmon and processing salmon without required state permits or plans.

The companies didn't pay more than three dozen fishermen who supplied the fish and did not pay or only partially paid about 100 employees at the plant, the charges say.

The venture failed because the owners were negligent, weren't prepared and lacked experience, the charges say.

In the end, state environmental officers had to destroy or make fish meal out of more than 400 tons of salmon that wasn't processed quickly enough. The fish would have been worth millions of dollars, the charges say.

Efforts to reach Enis and Oliver were unsuccessful Thursday.

The mounds of wasted fish could have filled about 16 40-foot shipping containers, said Manny Soares, head of the state's seafood section.

Soares said he hadn't heard of a case involving this much spoiled fish since the 1980s, when Bristol Bay lacked ice-making machines and other technology that today help keep fish fresh.

"This was exceptional, especially for this day and age," Soares said.

According to the charges, here's what happened at the plant Wards Cove Packing Co. had operated until 2002.

Oliver was the primary manager of Wild Alaskan, which was created in early 2004 and leased the Ekuk facility for two years.

Ekuk, thought to have been a major Eskimo village at one time, has no residents today, according to the state. It's located on the edge of Nushagak Bay, about 17 miles southeast of Dillingham.

In early June 2004, before the start of the salmon season, Oliver sold the company to Strategica, a merchant bank from Florida. Oliver said he had an Oregon buyer lined up to purchase salmon, but that wasn't true, according to the documents.?

Oliver began purchasing fish from local set-net fishermen on about June 15 in exchange for promise of future payment. The company also hired Lower 48 and foreign workers to head, gut and freeze the fish.

Almost immediately, fishermen began complaining to a state biologist that the company didn't have freezer or refrigerator space to handle all the fish it was buying.

State troopers following up on the complaints found that refrigerated seawater tanks to hold the freshly caught fish were too warm, and that ice machine and refrigeration units didn't work.

On July 9, fisherman John Bouker of Dillingham reported to troopers that the plant contained about 50,000 pounds of rotting salmon and that Oliver was directing employees to "periodically add fresh water and ice to the tanks to make the fish look fresh."

Troopers visiting the facility over the next few days, at times with search warrants, reported seeing rotting fish or "fish with exploded entrails."

Also, many of the frozen fish were bloody, rotting and stuck together because freezers weren't cold enough. Fly larvae coated buckets of salmon roe.

On July 12, state health officer Cherie Rice found thawed fish in cold storage tanks with disintegrating brown gills, sunken eyes and bloated bellies. There was also spoiled fish in the freezers.

Rice issued a notice of violation for processing rotten product, charging documents say, and detained more than 1 million pounds of fish. A fraction of that was later sold for about $150,000. The rest was destroyed or ground into fish meal.

The buying and processing of rotten fish continued after Rice issued the notice.

The misdemeanor charges are "Class A," said Mark Morones, Department of Law spokesman. They could bring up to one year in jail and a $10,000 fine for individuals, and up to $200,000 for a business.

The court has not set an arraignment date.

Daniel Cheyette, assistant attorney general, said allowing the fish on the market could have created a public health catastrophe and a public relations disaster for the state's seafood industry.

Daily News reporter Alex deMarban can be reached at ademarban@adn.com or 257-4310.