Time to get creative about mothball fleet
Texas can't be only place to dispose of rusting ships
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, July 22, 2025
Dan Reed
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/22/INGC6R23F61.DTL
It was always enjoyable seeing the watery parking lot for ships, hooked stern to bow, just to the right as we crossed the Benicia Bridge.
I was a boy, going on family vacations or going from my Concord home with my big brother for target practice or to shoot rabbits in the otherwise empty fields just beyond the fleet.
It was a time when "green" was just a color, not a political party or environmental movement.
Times have changed, and for the good. The majestic fleet of ghost ships -- once supposedly at the ready for America's next great conflict -- is a decaying lot leaking toxins into Suisun Bay.
The government is paralyzed about it. Why? This problem has been foreseen for years. Once-valiant ships have disintegrated so badly that experts say many can't be towed to Texas for scrapping, which, for some bewildering reason, is the only place they can be scrapped.
The official title for the 74 mainly obsolete, tired rust-buckets is the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, but just about everyone in the Bay Area knows the gray ships as the mothball fleet. And at this point -- with some of them being World War II relics -- what are they being held in reserve for? Davy Jones' Locker? A swift kick with a steel-toed boot could probably puncture the hulls of some of them.
"It's a big, complicated problem," said Raymond Lovett, technical director of the Ship Recycling Institute in Philadelphia, "and there is no good answer to this."
Part of the problem is the bureaucratic morass the ships are in. The controlling organization is the U.S. Maritime Administration. It wants to tow them through the Panama Canal to Brownsville, Texas, where there are ship-breaking plants. But that could spread invasive species, which have made a happy life clinging to the moldering hulls, to other waters.
The towing idea set off alarms with the U.S. Coast Guard, which wants the cruddy species scraped before the ships are scrapped. But in cleansing them of the organisms, the workers would probably pull off large hunks of paint loaded with toxic materials, which would sink to the bottom of the brackish waters.
The mothball fleet is not a new problem. In an Associated Press report 17 years ago, some in Congress were calling for the removal of what one politician called "the maritime cadavers," referring to the Suisun Bay ships and those in Texas and Virginia.
Most recently, it's irritated California legislators, especially when they learned that the Maritime Administration had commissioned a report in February to analyze how much paint has flaked off the ships and settled into the sediment below but gave them no word of it.
They wrote a letter to Sean Connaughton, the maritime administrator, June 22.
In a news release, Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, said: "We recognize that this is a complicated situation but inaction is not a solution. We intend to keep the pressure on the administration to develop a plan that protects the environment and allows for these ships to be disposed of properly."
The Maritime Administration's office of media affairs did not reply to e-mails seeking comment.
But in a June 30 article, The Chronicle's Carl Nolte described inspecting the fleet of cargo ships, merchant ships, frigates and tankers with Connaughton. He said the administrator seemed pained, flummoxed by the host of regulations needed to be hurdled to get the job done. "It is a conundrum," Connaughton said. "In order to comply with one set of government regulations we would have to violate another set."
So, why not some new clear thinking -- especially after all these years?
Others have ideas. Saul Bloom of Arc Ecology said the Maritime Administration has done little to preserve the vessels. "The ships wouldn't be in this condition if they were spending any money on maintenance," he said. "The fleet is a floating scrap heap."
Bloom believes that the Maritime Administration wants to move them to Texas because, while California and the Lone Star State have similar environmental regulations, California enforces them more stringently.
"They're transferring our environmental problem down to Texas," he said by phone from his San Francisco office. "They're looking for the least environmental cost possible."
Bloom's group, which has been working on this since 1993, thinks it makes more sense to put the ships in at the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard near Vallejo or Hunter's Point in San Francisco for dismantling instead of trying to make them stay afloat for the 5,000-mile tow to Texas.
Bloom also says that unemployed shipwrights, who lost their jobs because of base closures, could do the job. "We could put these people to good effect."
A congressional aide, who has sat in on meetings with the Maritime Administration but didn't want to be quoted as representing his boss, said, "It's not good for them to be sitting in the bay, and to move them might not be good for the bay, either."
Enough. It's time to get this thing fixed, so when we ride across the Benicia Bridge, as I did as a boy, we'll be able to admire the few remaining ships that are still able to defend us, not think they're decaying and polluting our waters.
Read the full article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/22/INGC6R23F61.DTL
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Sunday, July 22, 2025
Sunday, July 15, 2025
article: Once warships, now a `floating junkyard' | LA Times [AP]
Once warships, now a `floating junkyard'
Decrepit naval vessels from past wars sit in the Bay Area as environmental concerns delay their being dismantled into scrap.
July 15, 2007|Marcus Wohlsen, Associated Press
read the article: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/15/news/adme-ghostfleet15
BENICIA, CALIF. — From afar, the ghostly warships recall a fierce phalanx ready for battle. A closer look, though, shows the rust and rot of ships unfit for duty or even dismantling, a quandary that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars and could cause environmental misery that will cost millions more.
This is the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, a collection of once-valiant troop transports, tankers and other vessels dating to World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Advertisement
Before they can be scrapped and sold, Coast Guard regulations require the removal of the barnacles and other sea creatures clinging to their hulls. But that process causes toxic paint to flake into the water. Fear of contamination has brought ship disposal to a halt in California and delayed it in the country's other "mothball fleets" in Texas and Virginia.
"The fleet has devolved from these historic and wonderful vessels into basically a floating junkyard," said Saul Bloom of Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group working to make the ghost ships disappear. "While they're sitting there, they continue to pollute."
After World War II, the military designated several sites for ships withdrawn from active military service, among then Suisun Bay, a shallow, brackish body of water east of San Francisco Bay.
For several decades, many stood ready to be called back into duty on short notice. But over time, most of the vessels in the fleet have become too decrepit to justify the cost of repairs.
On the troop ship General Edwin D. Patrick, the wooden deck has turned black with rot, and grass grows through the cracks. Sea birds roost where soldiers once waited anxiously to go to war, and peeling paint exposes vast expanses of rust from bow to stern.
"There's really very little you can do to maintain a ship like this," said Sean T. Connaughton, head of the U.S. Maritime Administration, during a recent tour of the fleet.
As a result, the Patrick and 53 other ships of the 74 in the Suisun Bay fleet are slated to be chopped up for scrap. About 140 out of the 190 in all three fleets are destined for disposal.
The Maritime Administration sets aside about $1.2 million per ship for the dismantling program, though some, if not all, of that can be recovered by selling the scrap metal on the robust international steel market.
read the article: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/15/news/adme-ghostfleet15
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Decrepit naval vessels from past wars sit in the Bay Area as environmental concerns delay their being dismantled into scrap.
July 15, 2007|Marcus Wohlsen, Associated Press
read the article: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/15/news/adme-ghostfleet15
BENICIA, CALIF. — From afar, the ghostly warships recall a fierce phalanx ready for battle. A closer look, though, shows the rust and rot of ships unfit for duty or even dismantling, a quandary that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars and could cause environmental misery that will cost millions more.
This is the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, a collection of once-valiant troop transports, tankers and other vessels dating to World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Advertisement
Before they can be scrapped and sold, Coast Guard regulations require the removal of the barnacles and other sea creatures clinging to their hulls. But that process causes toxic paint to flake into the water. Fear of contamination has brought ship disposal to a halt in California and delayed it in the country's other "mothball fleets" in Texas and Virginia.
"The fleet has devolved from these historic and wonderful vessels into basically a floating junkyard," said Saul Bloom of Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group working to make the ghost ships disappear. "While they're sitting there, they continue to pollute."
After World War II, the military designated several sites for ships withdrawn from active military service, among then Suisun Bay, a shallow, brackish body of water east of San Francisco Bay.
For several decades, many stood ready to be called back into duty on short notice. But over time, most of the vessels in the fleet have become too decrepit to justify the cost of repairs.
On the troop ship General Edwin D. Patrick, the wooden deck has turned black with rot, and grass grows through the cracks. Sea birds roost where soldiers once waited anxiously to go to war, and peeling paint exposes vast expanses of rust from bow to stern.
"There's really very little you can do to maintain a ship like this," said Sean T. Connaughton, head of the U.S. Maritime Administration, during a recent tour of the fleet.
As a result, the Patrick and 53 other ships of the 74 in the Suisun Bay fleet are slated to be chopped up for scrap. About 140 out of the 190 in all three fleets are destined for disposal.
The Maritime Administration sets aside about $1.2 million per ship for the dismantling program, though some, if not all, of that can be recovered by selling the scrap metal on the robust international steel market.
read the article: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/15/news/adme-ghostfleet15
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Monday, July 09, 2025
article: Feds lift ban on scrapping of disused Calif. ships | Greenwire
Feds lift ban on scrapping of disused Calif. ships
Posted on July 9th, 2007
read the article: http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=277
Greenwire: The federal Maritime Administration announced last week that it will lift the ban on the disposal of more than 50 defunct warships in California’s Suisun Bay next month.
The vessels will be towed from the bay to the former Naval Air Station Alameda where their hulls will be scrubbed of sea life before being hauled to a ship-breaking facility in Texas.
But environmentalists claim that the hull scrubbing causes toxic paint to flake off into the water.
“It looks like they’re using San Francisco Bay waters as a dumping ground,” Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Michael Wall said.
Arc Ecology Executive Director Saul Bloom said he was disappointed by the announcement because portions of the Alameda site, which was closed decades ago, are Superfund sites and the ship scrubbing could complicate ongoing cleanup efforts there. He added that he was also dismayed that the Maritime Administration has not committed to obtaining permits under the Clean Water Act for the scrubbing.
But San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board Executive Officer Bruce Wolfe said he does not want his agency to demand Clean Water Act permits for the work because they would slow the removal of the ships from the bay. He added that he wants answers about what will happen to the dozens of ships that will be left behind in the bay because the Maritime Administration only has the budget to move 15 old ships out of three facilities nationwide in the next year.
Last week, Maritime Administration head Sean Connaughton said that his agency would provide California with the results of tests it conducted on a contaminant containment system used to dispose of disused ships in Virginia. He also said the hull cleaning in California would start with a pilot program (Scott Lindlaw, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, July 6).
Last month, the Maritime Administration said it will not send any more of the “ghost fleet” ships sitting in Virginia’s James River to the United Kingdom for scrapping and disposal. The agency halted all ship disposal programs nationally earlier this year after officials warned that the work could have undue environmental consequences. There is still a backlog of about 40 deteriorating ships in Virginia’s James River though, some of which are contaminated with asbestos and PCBs (Greenwire, June 5).
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read the article: http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=277
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Posted on July 9th, 2007
read the article: http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=277
Greenwire: The federal Maritime Administration announced last week that it will lift the ban on the disposal of more than 50 defunct warships in California’s Suisun Bay next month.
The vessels will be towed from the bay to the former Naval Air Station Alameda where their hulls will be scrubbed of sea life before being hauled to a ship-breaking facility in Texas.
But environmentalists claim that the hull scrubbing causes toxic paint to flake off into the water.
“It looks like they’re using San Francisco Bay waters as a dumping ground,” Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Michael Wall said.
Arc Ecology Executive Director Saul Bloom said he was disappointed by the announcement because portions of the Alameda site, which was closed decades ago, are Superfund sites and the ship scrubbing could complicate ongoing cleanup efforts there. He added that he was also dismayed that the Maritime Administration has not committed to obtaining permits under the Clean Water Act for the scrubbing.
But San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board Executive Officer Bruce Wolfe said he does not want his agency to demand Clean Water Act permits for the work because they would slow the removal of the ships from the bay. He added that he wants answers about what will happen to the dozens of ships that will be left behind in the bay because the Maritime Administration only has the budget to move 15 old ships out of three facilities nationwide in the next year.
Last week, Maritime Administration head Sean Connaughton said that his agency would provide California with the results of tests it conducted on a contaminant containment system used to dispose of disused ships in Virginia. He also said the hull cleaning in California would start with a pilot program (Scott Lindlaw, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, July 6).
Last month, the Maritime Administration said it will not send any more of the “ghost fleet” ships sitting in Virginia’s James River to the United Kingdom for scrapping and disposal. The agency halted all ship disposal programs nationally earlier this year after officials warned that the work could have undue environmental consequences. There is still a backlog of about 40 deteriorating ships in Virginia’s James River though, some of which are contaminated with asbestos and PCBs (Greenwire, June 5).
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read the article: http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=277
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Sunday, July 08, 2025
article: State demands toxic paint from ships be cleaned | Oroville Mercury-Register
State demands toxic paint from ships be cleaned
'We are using California (law) to enforce the federal Clean Water Act,' Area water boss says
By Thomas Peele, MEDIANEWS STAFF
Oroville Mercury-Register
Posted: 07/08/2025
Read the article : http://www.orovillemr.com/news/bayarea/ci_6327173
California fired back at the U.S. Maritime Administration on Friday, giving it a month to submit an "aggressive schedule" for cleaning up tons of toxic paint shedding from ships in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet.
The pollution "is of significant concern and must be abated," Bruce Wolfe, the state chief of water quality for the Bay Area, wrote in a letter to the Maritime Administration.
Wolfe also gave the administration 10 days to turn over results from tests on underwater cleaning performed on ships in Virginia that could be key to whether the federal ship-scrapping program can soon restart.
The orders came a day after U.S. Maritime Administrator Sean Connaughton told the state he was unilaterally lifting a moratorium on disposal of ships from the Suisun "mothball" fleet and that underwater hull cleaning would be conducted in Alameda before the ships are towed to Texas, where they would be cut up.
There are 73 ships in the fleet, 54 of which are slated to be destroyed. They present two separate environmental problems.
First, the Coast Guard last year ordered that before the ships can be towed to Texas for disposal, the underwater portions of the hulls must be cleaned of organic matter like barnacles and seaweed to keep them from spreading to areas where they are not native. But when the Maritime Administration had two World War II Victory ships cleaned at the Port of Richmond 11 months ago, sheets of decaying metal came off the bottom of the vessels and weren't cleaned up.
Secondly, above the waterline, the ships are shedding tons of toxic metals from paint that has fallen from the ships hulls, decks and superstructures, according to a report prepared for the Maritime Administration.
Friday's order was designed to address both problems. The state wants the Maritime Administration to present a plan for cleaning the hulls that captures the metal discharges. And it wants a plan for cleaning up the peeling paint. The order marks the first time the state has addressed pollution concerns caused by problems above the ships' waterlines.
"We don't really want to turn this into a big bureaucratic mess," Wolfe said late Friday. "We are trying to nudge them."
He admitted that the state's authority over the Maritime Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, "may be limited" if the federal agency chose to ignore Friday's letter.
"We are using California (law) to enforce the federal Clean Water Act," Wolfe said. "If they decline to respond, we will study our legal remedies. Hopefully, it won't come to that."
Maritime Administration officials could not be reached for comment late Friday.
Staff of the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board have been concerned about the underwater hull cleaning since the Port of Richmond work left sheets of metals in the water in August.
Wolfe wrote Friday that the state will also soon require the administration to submit plans to conduct further testing of Suisun Bay sediments. An environmental report dated Feb. 15 found that sediment samples taken around the fleet showed what were the same high levels of toxic metals found in paint flaking off the ships.
MediaNews reported on June 17 that the report showed more than 21 tons of paint containing concentrations of metals that qualified as hazardous waste under California law had fallen from 40 ships. The report estimated another 65 tons of paint remained on the vessels and could enter the environment.
Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group turned the 615-page report over to MediaNews after obtaining it under the Freedom of Information Act. The administration's ships operation division in San Francisco ordered the report in June 2006, a month after MediaNews first reported on the deteriorating condition of the Suisun fleet and published photographs of paint peeling from the ships hulls, decks and super structures.
The document listed seven metals, including copper, lead, zinc and barium, found in paint samples that qualified as hazardous waste under state law.
Connaughton, a lawyer and former merchant seaman, has repeatedly said that the best way to deal with the ships is to scrape them as quickly as possible. But he placed a moratorium on the administration's disposal in February after California objected to the way the administration had cleaned the underwater sections of hulls in Richmond.
He estimated that as many as 15 vessels could be scrapped within a year if the hull-cleaning issue with the state was resolved. Even under an increased disposal program, it would take years for all the Suisun ships to be destroyed.
Read the article : http://www.orovillemr.com/news/bayarea/ci_6327173
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'We are using California (law) to enforce the federal Clean Water Act,' Area water boss says
By Thomas Peele, MEDIANEWS STAFF
Oroville Mercury-Register
Posted: 07/08/2025
Read the article : http://www.orovillemr.com/news/bayarea/ci_6327173
California fired back at the U.S. Maritime Administration on Friday, giving it a month to submit an "aggressive schedule" for cleaning up tons of toxic paint shedding from ships in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet.
The pollution "is of significant concern and must be abated," Bruce Wolfe, the state chief of water quality for the Bay Area, wrote in a letter to the Maritime Administration.
Wolfe also gave the administration 10 days to turn over results from tests on underwater cleaning performed on ships in Virginia that could be key to whether the federal ship-scrapping program can soon restart.
The orders came a day after U.S. Maritime Administrator Sean Connaughton told the state he was unilaterally lifting a moratorium on disposal of ships from the Suisun "mothball" fleet and that underwater hull cleaning would be conducted in Alameda before the ships are towed to Texas, where they would be cut up.
There are 73 ships in the fleet, 54 of which are slated to be destroyed. They present two separate environmental problems.
First, the Coast Guard last year ordered that before the ships can be towed to Texas for disposal, the underwater portions of the hulls must be cleaned of organic matter like barnacles and seaweed to keep them from spreading to areas where they are not native. But when the Maritime Administration had two World War II Victory ships cleaned at the Port of Richmond 11 months ago, sheets of decaying metal came off the bottom of the vessels and weren't cleaned up.
Secondly, above the waterline, the ships are shedding tons of toxic metals from paint that has fallen from the ships hulls, decks and superstructures, according to a report prepared for the Maritime Administration.
Friday's order was designed to address both problems. The state wants the Maritime Administration to present a plan for cleaning the hulls that captures the metal discharges. And it wants a plan for cleaning up the peeling paint. The order marks the first time the state has addressed pollution concerns caused by problems above the ships' waterlines.
"We don't really want to turn this into a big bureaucratic mess," Wolfe said late Friday. "We are trying to nudge them."
He admitted that the state's authority over the Maritime Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, "may be limited" if the federal agency chose to ignore Friday's letter.
"We are using California (law) to enforce the federal Clean Water Act," Wolfe said. "If they decline to respond, we will study our legal remedies. Hopefully, it won't come to that."
Maritime Administration officials could not be reached for comment late Friday.
Staff of the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board have been concerned about the underwater hull cleaning since the Port of Richmond work left sheets of metals in the water in August.
Wolfe wrote Friday that the state will also soon require the administration to submit plans to conduct further testing of Suisun Bay sediments. An environmental report dated Feb. 15 found that sediment samples taken around the fleet showed what were the same high levels of toxic metals found in paint flaking off the ships.
MediaNews reported on June 17 that the report showed more than 21 tons of paint containing concentrations of metals that qualified as hazardous waste under California law had fallen from 40 ships. The report estimated another 65 tons of paint remained on the vessels and could enter the environment.
Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group turned the 615-page report over to MediaNews after obtaining it under the Freedom of Information Act. The administration's ships operation division in San Francisco ordered the report in June 2006, a month after MediaNews first reported on the deteriorating condition of the Suisun fleet and published photographs of paint peeling from the ships hulls, decks and super structures.
The document listed seven metals, including copper, lead, zinc and barium, found in paint samples that qualified as hazardous waste under state law.
Connaughton, a lawyer and former merchant seaman, has repeatedly said that the best way to deal with the ships is to scrape them as quickly as possible. But he placed a moratorium on the administration's disposal in February after California objected to the way the administration had cleaned the underwater sections of hulls in Richmond.
He estimated that as many as 15 vessels could be scrapped within a year if the hull-cleaning issue with the state was resolved. Even under an increased disposal program, it would take years for all the Suisun ships to be destroyed.
Read the article : http://www.orovillemr.com/news/bayarea/ci_6327173
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Thursday, July 05, 2025
article : Environmental Risks Haunt 'Ghost Fleet' | Washington Post
Environmental Risks Haunt 'Ghost Fleet'
By MARCUS WOHLSEN
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 5, 2007; 11:52 PM
read the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501032_pf.html
BENICIA, Calif. -- From afar, the ghostly warships recall a fierce phalanx ready for battle. A closer look, though, shows the rust and rot of ships unfit for duty or even dismantling, a quandary that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars and could cause environmental misery that will cost millions more.
This is the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, a collection of once-valiant troop transports, tankers and other vessels dating back to World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Before they can be scrapped and sold, Coast Guard regulations require the removal of the barnacles and other sea creatures clinging to their hulls. That process causes toxic paint to flake off into the water, and fear of contamination has brought ship disposal to a halt in California, and delayed it in the country's other "mothball fleets" in Texas and Virginia.
"The fleet has devolved from these historic and wonderful vessels into basically a floating junkyard," said Saul Bloom of Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group working to make the ghost ships disappear. "While they're sitting there, they continue to pollute."
After World War II, the military designated several sites for ships withdrawn from active military service, among them Suisun Bay, a shallow, brackish body of water east of San Francisco Bay.
For several decades, many stood ready to be called back into duty on short notice. But over time, most of the vessels in the fleet have become too decrepit to justify the cost of repairs.
On the troop ship General Edwin D. Patrick, the wooden deck has turned black with rot, and grass grows through the cracks. Sea birds roost where soldiers once waited anxiously to go to war, and peeling paint exposes vast expanses of rust from bow to stern.
"There's really very little you can do to maintain a ship like this," said Sean T. Connaughton, head of the U.S. Maritime Administration during a recent tour of the fleet.
As a result, the Patrick and 53 other ships of the 74 in the Suisun Bay fleet are slated to be chopped up for scrap. About 140 out of the 190 in all three fleets are destined for disposal.
The Maritime Administration sets aside about $1.2 million per ship for the dismantling program, though some if not all of that can be recovered by selling the scrap metal on the robust international steel market.
By comparison, the federal government spends about $20 million a year to maintain the three reserve fleets. But agency officials say the potential cost of environmental damage caused by aging ships crumbling and sinking into the bay could dwarf the expense of the dismantling program.
Under a congressional order, the Maritime Administration had a 2006 deadline to dismantle ships in reserve fleets classified as no longer useful.
That hasn't happened. Maritime officials blame a lack of funding and a shortage of facilities able to perform the messy task of taking the massive ships apart. But recently, the more vexing environmental problem has also emerged.
Owing to a lack of proper facilities on the West Coast, California ships headed for the scrap heap must first be towed through the Panama Canal to Brownsville, Texas, center of shipbreaking operations in the U.S.
But on these towering hulks, mounted with guns stilled long ago and propellers nearly rusted through, thriving ecosystems cluster beneath the waterline. Millions of microscopic invertebrates in moss-like colonies several inches thick shelter barnacles, clams and tiny crustaceans.
Some of these organisms have already devastated native San Francisco Bay species that lacked the defenses against the sudden introduction of invaders unwittingly transported from overseas. Hauling the uncleaned ships to Texas could spread these ecologically hazardous creatures even farther.
Last year, divers using devices resembling floor buffers "scamped" several Suisun Bay ships to clean off the unwanted organisms, but tests of samples taken around the ships showed it was leaving toxic paint in the water.
Until federal officials figure out how to keep the paint from contaminating the bay, California regulators have warned them to stop the cleaning or risk running afoul of state water laws.
The conflicting regulations halted the scrapping not only of California's mothball fleet but also the country's two other reserve fleets in Beaumont, Texas, and on the James River near Newport News, Va. The discovery of the paint in Suisun Bay had led the Maritime Administration to place a moratorium on ship disposal in all three reserve fleets, though agreements with Virginia and Texas have paved the way for cleaning to resume.
Connaughton announced Thursday that he would lift the California moratorium on Aug. 1.
"It is of prime importance that obsolete vessels be removed from the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet as soon as possible," he wrote in a letter to state regulators.
But regulators, along with environmentalists and members of the state's congressional delegation still find the risk unacceptable.
Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the board wants to discuss tests of a new technique for containing paint scraped off during hull cleaning before allowing the ship disposal to resume.
"We agree with the goal of the ships getting disposed of as quickly as possible," Wolfe said Thursday. "We just want to make sure it's done in an environmentally sensitive manner."
They also cite a February study suggesting paint is flaking off the ships on its own and dumping more than 21 tons of copper, lead, zinc and other metals into the ecologically sensitive estuary.
Still, Connaughton has promised that by this time next year the environmental quandary will be solved and 15 crumbling ships will be gone from Suisun Bay.
And Maritime Administration officials play down the environmental threat, arguing that heavy metals are found in sediments throughout the bay. The hulls of even the most rickety vessels are secure, according to fleet managers, with none likely to sink anytime soon.
"We're trying to remove these vessels as quickly and safely as possible," Connaughton said. "This has been a very difficult issue for all of us."
If any ships do go down, they would leave not only paint but PCBs, fuel oil and other pollutants into wildlife-rich waters.
For sailors who served on them, the possible legacy of pollution adds further distress to the sorrow of seeing their cherished vessels cut up and destroyed.
"I don't think anyone is going to remember them except for the guys that served on them," said Chris Plum, a hull technician in the 1980s on the USS Cimarron, a tanker slated for disposal. "Nobody cares. There's more money in scrap."
read the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501032_pf.html
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By MARCUS WOHLSEN
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 5, 2007; 11:52 PM
read the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501032_pf.html
BENICIA, Calif. -- From afar, the ghostly warships recall a fierce phalanx ready for battle. A closer look, though, shows the rust and rot of ships unfit for duty or even dismantling, a quandary that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars and could cause environmental misery that will cost millions more.
This is the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, a collection of once-valiant troop transports, tankers and other vessels dating back to World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Before they can be scrapped and sold, Coast Guard regulations require the removal of the barnacles and other sea creatures clinging to their hulls. That process causes toxic paint to flake off into the water, and fear of contamination has brought ship disposal to a halt in California, and delayed it in the country's other "mothball fleets" in Texas and Virginia.
"The fleet has devolved from these historic and wonderful vessels into basically a floating junkyard," said Saul Bloom of Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group working to make the ghost ships disappear. "While they're sitting there, they continue to pollute."
After World War II, the military designated several sites for ships withdrawn from active military service, among them Suisun Bay, a shallow, brackish body of water east of San Francisco Bay.
For several decades, many stood ready to be called back into duty on short notice. But over time, most of the vessels in the fleet have become too decrepit to justify the cost of repairs.
On the troop ship General Edwin D. Patrick, the wooden deck has turned black with rot, and grass grows through the cracks. Sea birds roost where soldiers once waited anxiously to go to war, and peeling paint exposes vast expanses of rust from bow to stern.
"There's really very little you can do to maintain a ship like this," said Sean T. Connaughton, head of the U.S. Maritime Administration during a recent tour of the fleet.
As a result, the Patrick and 53 other ships of the 74 in the Suisun Bay fleet are slated to be chopped up for scrap. About 140 out of the 190 in all three fleets are destined for disposal.
The Maritime Administration sets aside about $1.2 million per ship for the dismantling program, though some if not all of that can be recovered by selling the scrap metal on the robust international steel market.
By comparison, the federal government spends about $20 million a year to maintain the three reserve fleets. But agency officials say the potential cost of environmental damage caused by aging ships crumbling and sinking into the bay could dwarf the expense of the dismantling program.
Under a congressional order, the Maritime Administration had a 2006 deadline to dismantle ships in reserve fleets classified as no longer useful.
That hasn't happened. Maritime officials blame a lack of funding and a shortage of facilities able to perform the messy task of taking the massive ships apart. But recently, the more vexing environmental problem has also emerged.
Owing to a lack of proper facilities on the West Coast, California ships headed for the scrap heap must first be towed through the Panama Canal to Brownsville, Texas, center of shipbreaking operations in the U.S.
But on these towering hulks, mounted with guns stilled long ago and propellers nearly rusted through, thriving ecosystems cluster beneath the waterline. Millions of microscopic invertebrates in moss-like colonies several inches thick shelter barnacles, clams and tiny crustaceans.
Some of these organisms have already devastated native San Francisco Bay species that lacked the defenses against the sudden introduction of invaders unwittingly transported from overseas. Hauling the uncleaned ships to Texas could spread these ecologically hazardous creatures even farther.
Last year, divers using devices resembling floor buffers "scamped" several Suisun Bay ships to clean off the unwanted organisms, but tests of samples taken around the ships showed it was leaving toxic paint in the water.
Until federal officials figure out how to keep the paint from contaminating the bay, California regulators have warned them to stop the cleaning or risk running afoul of state water laws.
The conflicting regulations halted the scrapping not only of California's mothball fleet but also the country's two other reserve fleets in Beaumont, Texas, and on the James River near Newport News, Va. The discovery of the paint in Suisun Bay had led the Maritime Administration to place a moratorium on ship disposal in all three reserve fleets, though agreements with Virginia and Texas have paved the way for cleaning to resume.
Connaughton announced Thursday that he would lift the California moratorium on Aug. 1.
"It is of prime importance that obsolete vessels be removed from the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet as soon as possible," he wrote in a letter to state regulators.
But regulators, along with environmentalists and members of the state's congressional delegation still find the risk unacceptable.
Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the board wants to discuss tests of a new technique for containing paint scraped off during hull cleaning before allowing the ship disposal to resume.
"We agree with the goal of the ships getting disposed of as quickly as possible," Wolfe said Thursday. "We just want to make sure it's done in an environmentally sensitive manner."
They also cite a February study suggesting paint is flaking off the ships on its own and dumping more than 21 tons of copper, lead, zinc and other metals into the ecologically sensitive estuary.
Still, Connaughton has promised that by this time next year the environmental quandary will be solved and 15 crumbling ships will be gone from Suisun Bay.
And Maritime Administration officials play down the environmental threat, arguing that heavy metals are found in sediments throughout the bay. The hulls of even the most rickety vessels are secure, according to fleet managers, with none likely to sink anytime soon.
"We're trying to remove these vessels as quickly and safely as possible," Connaughton said. "This has been a very difficult issue for all of us."
If any ships do go down, they would leave not only paint but PCBs, fuel oil and other pollutants into wildlife-rich waters.
For sailors who served on them, the possible legacy of pollution adds further distress to the sorrow of seeing their cherished vessels cut up and destroyed.
"I don't think anyone is going to remember them except for the guys that served on them," said Chris Plum, a hull technician in the 1980s on the USS Cimarron, a tanker slated for disposal. "Nobody cares. There's more money in scrap."
read the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501032_pf.html
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