Suisun Bay: Dismantling of rotting ships begins

For nearly two decades, the federal government has known it has had an environmental problem with more than 50 mothballed ships anchored in Suisun Bay. Yet, for many years, nothing was done to remove or dismantle the ships.

Not only were the unused ships decaying and useless, they were polluting the Delta. A 2007 Maritime Administration study of the fleet estimated that 21 tons of paint with toxic metals had fallen from 40 of the ships into Suisun Bay and that the situation would only get worse as the ships decayed.

The report, which was first revealed by Bay Area News Group investigative reporter Thomas Peele in June 2007, also estimated that another 65 tons of tainted paint remained on the hulls of the mothball fleet.

Despite the hazard to the Delta environment, the Bush administration continued to find excuses to delay action on the fleet, despite calls from area legislators to get rid of the vessels.

One of the problems was that the Coast Guard required the ships to be stripped of loose paint before they were towed to Texas to be dismantled. It also was argued that it would be too costly to use local dry docks to clean the hulls of ships or to dismantle them.

Fortunately, the Obama administration did not agree and finally decided to begin using Bay Area facilities to clean hulls and dismantle ships. A couple of ships already have had their hulls scraped at a San Francisco shipyard.

Last month, the first ship from the mothball fleet was towed to the reopened Mare Island shipyard in Vallejo to be dismantled. The 50-year-old Solon Turman, a 690-foot cargo ship that had been anchored in Suisun Bay for nearly 23 years, will be taken apart over the next nine months by Allied Defense Recycling.

A second ship, the SS President, will arrive later this month for dismantling and recycling.

The reopening of the Vallejo shipyard will create 100 to 120 jobs when it is fully operational, giving new life to the facility, which was closed in 1995.

The Mare Island dry dock is the first Maritime Administration-approved ship dismantling facility and the only one on the West Coast.

The Obama administration deserves considerable credit for finally taking decisive action to start removing the decaying mothball fleet from Suisun Bay and for approving that the scraping and dismantling work be done at Bay Area dry docks.

The sooner the 50 remaining ships anchored in Suisun Bay are removed, the better. The Delta has enough environmental problems without tons of toxic paint seeping into the water, or for any of the rotting ships to sink.

-- Oakland Tribune

Source: Published By Times Herald. Posted: 1 March 2011 01:02:11 AM PST

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/opinion/ci_17508757

The Real Story on Rotting Ships: Opinion

The Oakland Tribune editorial published in the Times-Herald ("Dismantling of rotting ships begins," March 1) contained misstatements.

Ships, and hazardous materials that were used in their construction, are not organic matter and do not decay or rot. Ships are made out of metal, and they rust. It is that process that weakens the metal and elevates the risk that a vessel may breach, thereby causing a navigation hazard and potentially releasing fuel into the water.

Paint is a coating, most often applied to a ship hull to retard rust. And if regular maintenance is not done, it flakes. That is what comes off of the Suisun Bay vessels. Nonetheless, paint flaking does not signify rot or decay. The ships are not useless, either; they are the raw material for a valuable commodity, metal scrap.

The domestic ship recycling industry was, until the 2008 lawsuit by Bay Area groups against the Maritime Administration, dismantling the SBRF vessels. It resumed in the fall of 2009, prior to the settlement of the lawsuit.

Allied Defense Recycling (ADR) principal, Jay Anast, has, in the pages of the Times Standard, abandoned his pledge of 100-120 jobs. It is out of his hands anyway since the Maritime Administration forced him to hire on a politically connected -- and expensive -- remediation company to abate and, its parent company to demolish, the Salon Turman. The ADR facility is not the first Maritime Administration approved ship dismantling facility; however, it is the first domestic Maritime Administration capitalized facility. It can stand proudly with Able UK, a non-U.S. company that the Maritime Administration has sunk over $14 million of taxpayers' hard-earned money into scrapping four ships (and keeping all scrap proceeds); a process that has taken nearly a decade.

Allied Defense Recycling is not even the first West Coast approved facility. There are apparently two or three if the chimera in the Northern Marianna Islands actually is approved. The other West Coast company is a Disabled, Veteran-owned pass-through based in Washington State, which apparently lacks as much past performance as ADR, and like ADR, until the Maritime Administration decided to use taxpayers money to play capitalist, has no physical facility either.

From a business, or industry, standpoint, the Obama administration should be hanging its head in shame for allowing the Maritime Administration to squander taxpayers' money on the Mare Island facility. Sure, it is only (for now), $3.1 million, but it for two ships that a Bay Area-based ship recycling facility should have paid the taxpayer for. If the company was not even capitalized sufficiently to offer $1, then it is not capitalized enough to take the known risks the ships entail, such as regulatory compliant management of the PCB's in the coatings. It is not like the Maritime Administration can't sell Suisun Bay vessels. On Dec. 21, the Maritime Administration accepted sales bids on a six ship lot, including five Suisun Bay vessels, one of which was of sufficient size to warrant a sales bid. The Maritime Administration has been sitting on the award of the LINCOLN since then. The same is true for the OHIO from the Beaumont fleet. The Maritime Administration makes it a higher priority to efficiently run its re-flagging operation, which allows U.S.-flagged vessels to be scrapped overseas without meeting the Toxic Substances Control Act PCB export ban than to quickly award to the highest domestic sales bidder.

As a legitimate, and capitalized, metal recycling firm, which unsuccessfully sought to sign a long-term lease for the Mare Island facility -- at zero expense or risk for the taxpayer -- we are continually amazed at the lengths the local, state, and federal governments have gone to; apparently to ensure that no successful ship recycling operation is established at Mare Island. Clearly the 3,000 workers who applied for jobs that did not exist at Mare Island -- and who will be dinged for taxes on their unemployment benefits -- had the expectation that the local, state, and federal governments weren't just playing smoke and mirrors. We could have told them otherwise. Any time the leasing entities involved want to get serious about ship recycling in the Bay Area, we will be happy to return to the table.

Polly Parks

Southern Recycling - EMR USA

Washington, D.C., area office

Source: Published By Times Herald on 9 March 2011.

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_17571667