This fall, the U.S. Navy will contract three
Cold War-era aircraft carriers — the USS Forrestal, the USS Saratoga and the
USS Constellation — for scrapping. Often called "supercarriers" owing
to their massive size, the ships contain nearly 60,000 tons of steel and other
metal each.
All three carriers are likely to be sent to
the landlocked city of Brownsville, Texas, to be ripped apart.
The deepwater Port of Brownsville lies inland
at the end of a 17-mile channel connecting to the Gulf of Mexico. The long
channel provides unparalleled protection from hurricanes and tropical storms.
In the past two decades, the city has become
the center of the U.S. ship-recycling industry. Five of the nation's eight
recycling companies are here. It's like Home Depot locating right next to
Lowe's and Ace Hardware.
Tearing up big ships can be a lucrative
business. It's also a messy one. Walk inside a ship that's being scrapped, and
you'll find one of the nastiest places imaginable: filthy and rusty, with
everything that's poisonous and salvageable torn out.
If it has rained, everything's all wet, too.
Brush up against a bulkhead and you can kiss a white shirt goodbye.
But if you're a ship cutter, this is your
office, and your cutting torch, your music to work by. Sixty cutters are
employed here at Bay Bridge Texas, but even more will be hired soon.
Bay Bridge Texas is the nation's newest
ship-recycling yard, says senior Vice President Barry Chambers. The company,
backed by Indian investors with deep pockets, just moved to Brownsville from
Chesapeake, Va.
Chambers says the infrastructure, the deep
water channel and the weather all make the Texas city particularly attractive
for his company. But building the yard, he says, still required plenty of work.
"This land did not look like this,"
Chambers says. "I put in 175,000 cubic yards of fill, leveled and
compacted it."
Now, the yard's piers are built to handle
ships as large as aircraft carriers. The pilings, made of steel cores, sink 60
feet deep.
From a distance, the tanker ship at the dock
looks as though giant Post-It notes have been slapped onto the hull. But those
squares are actually holes; the ship's been turned into Swiss cheese for
ventilation and light.
Sergio Cazeres, who's been cutting ships
since 1992, says the first cuts are made in the side of the ship. "In the
hulls, we make cuts so the air can flow in," he says. "If it's too
hot then we provide fans."
Recycled ships are typically scrapped from
the top down and from front to back. As the steel is harvested, the bow
lightens, and powerful winches begin to pull the ship out of the water and up a
ramp.
Large white air bags, supporting 250 tons of
weight, are rolled underneath.
Chambers says he moved from Virginia to Texas
not just for the warm weather and infrastructural perks, but also for the labor
pool. He pays between $10 and $13 an hour for the recycling work.
"The Hispanic workforce that I found
here is excellent," Chambers says. "It's attitude more than anything.
Every day here is different. This is not an assembly line job, and everyday you
have to use your wits."
In a nation hungry for working-class jobs,
ship recycling is helping to drive Brownsville's economy — even at these
relatively low wages. Nearly 1,000 welders scrap 80 percent of the ships
recycled in the U.S.
After a ship is dismantled, the metal is
shipped to Mexico. Chambers used to send much of his steel to the city of
Monterrey in railroad cars — 20 boxcars per train, loaded with 60 tons of steel
in each.
But that steel had a market value of 10 to 15
cents per pound. And eventually, the boxcars began showing up in Mexico empty.
Chambers has no idea how the bandits were
doing it. "It's unbelievable," he says.
It was no small feat to rip out the steel,
Chambers says. "We've even tried welding the steel in there. Then we tried
welding bars across the top of it, but it still disappeared."
So now, the steel goes by barge, and the
shipments arrive intact. A few months later, they come back into the U.S. as
automobile frames, engines and parts to be assembled here.
It's the large availability of ships to be
recycled that drives the industry. And as the nation's reserve fleet of aging
warships and tankers has become too old to use, those ships are increasingly
being sold for scrap.
The price for steel has decreased in recent
months with the slowing of the world economy. But that doesn't mean you can't
make money breaking ships. Kris Wood, vice president of ESCO Marine, says ships
still yield plenty of other valuable elements.
"There's a percentage makeup of
nonferrous metals: That's your coppers, your brass, monels that are higher
value," Wood says. "So, if the scrap market is down but the ship is
still very rich in nonferrous metals, the project can still be a lucrative
one."
Back on board at Chambers' yard, the ship
cutters remove everything of value — the furniture, the plumbing, the fixtures,
the lighting — and sell it. A shopper can get some good deals — if they're open
to a nautical theme.
Source: July 25, 2012
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