SUISUN BAY, Calif. (KGO) --
Seven years and 57 ships later, the last old vessel polluting Suisun Bay is
getting ready for a final voyage to a ship recycling yard in Texas. The
mothball fleet sat unused for decades; a floating toxic waste dump. Here's a
look at how a legal fight got us to this point.
Crews at Mare Island are
preparing the cargo ship Cape Borda for her final voyage to a Texas wrecking
yard. After being laid up for years in the mothball fleet at Suisun Bay, she's
the last ship from there scheduled to be dismantled.
"We had to get 57 ships
done in seven years," said Joel Szabat with the U.S. Maritime
Administration. "That was a heavy, heavy lift. But we finished about
almost two months early."
The Navy began storing
surplus ships in Suisun Bay after World War II, reaching a peak of more than
300 in the 1950s. They were supposed to be able to quickly go back into service
in an emergency, but most contained a toxic soup of chemicals.
"We're talking
approximately 57 vessels that were shedding toxic paint, that were laden with
metals like zinc and mercury and lead and all of this was getting directly into
Suisun Bay," said Sejal Choksi-Chugh with SF Baykeeper.
That's up to 20 tons of
toxic chemicals over the years. In 2009, environmental groups and the state of
California sued the federal government. The result was a consent decree
requiring the feds to remove the ships. The work went quickly at first, because
scrap metal prices were high. The feds were literally making money scrapping
the ships. In fact, things went so well, it has become a model for the fleet.
"What we learned out
here in California will be implemented in our other two fleet sites, one in
Virginia and one in Texas," said Kevin Tokarski with the U.S. Maritime
Administration.
Choksi-Chugh added,
"There's a lot less pollutants in Suisun Bay now and that means a lot less
pollution for the fish to eat."
You will still see ships in
Suisun Bay, ready for reactivation if the country needs them again. But these
ships won't have nearly the amount of pollution inside than the old ones.
Source: abc7news.
03 August 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment