ASTORIA — The term
shipbreaking, a common term used for dismantling ships, scrapping and selling
their metal and other usable components, sticks in the craw of Frank Allen, the
organizer behind Blue Ocean Environmental and its proposal to dismantle vessels
at the Port of Astoria’s North Tongue Point facility.
His proposed operation, he
said, isn’t haphazardly breaking but methodically cleaning and recycling; it’s
sticking to vessels less than 200 tons – boats instead of ships – for the
foreseeable future; and it isn’t trying to do anything in the water, an
environmentally concerning practice found in places like Brownsville, Texas,
but illegal in Oregon.
During a public presentation
and forum Thursday, July 25, at the old Port of Astoria offices, Allen told the
sparse audience of eight how he wants to start a trial run with a 40-foot
vessel languishing at North Tongue Point, then stop and see what the community
thinks, holding an additional community forum.
Cleaning,
then dismantling
“I couldn’t think of a
more benign way to do this than fix a problem then stop,” said Allen of the
derelict 40-foot fishing vessel Cap’n Oscar, owned by the Port and languishing
alongside Pier 2 at North Tongue Point.
Allen, whose main business
is internationally trading seafood through his company Live Online Seafood,
wants to bring in an expert demolition team from New York he’s worked with
before as a commercial and industrial contractor on the East Coast.
He’d also hire some locals
to start teaching them the process. If the operation continues, he said, it
will eventually need a homegrown workforce, possibly including training
opportunities at Tongue Point Job Corps Center and Clatsop Community College.
His crew from New York
would take the vessel onto the docks on a dolly with welding supports on the
sides to keep it erect.
“What’s different with the
other operations is they go for the scrapping first,” said Allen. “We’re going
to go in and clean it up first, then we’re going to scrap it out.”
All usable, working parts
would be salvaged and sold whole. Then they would proceed with scrapping and
dismantling. The metal would be barged to Seattle to steel firm Nucor Corp.
(www.nucor.com), which would reprocess it for use in the U.S.
His crew from the East
Coast, he added, has used the same method on two barges in New York.
After checking with Job
Corps, Allen said his operation hours wouldn’t extend beyond their’s, between 6
a.m. and 9 p.m.
“I want to make sure you
finish the job and make it broom clean,” said Leon Jackson, adding that the
Port should hold a bond until the first vessel is completely done with. Jackson
came to learn more of the operation, he said, after reading mostly negative and
contradictory coverage in The Daily Astorian.
“We can bond up to $10
million right now,” said Allen, adding that the Port has asked for a deposit.
There is no agreement yet in place between the Port and Blue Ocean.
Allen and Port staff
lamented previously over not being able to work inside the western portion of
Hangar 3 that previously housed the evicted Pacific Expedition yacht-building
company. The city’s building inspector said it needed to undergo significant
improvements. It was hoped that doing it indoors would eliminate many of the
environmental hazards, and Allen offered to clean the portion of the building,
left with fiberglass debris on the inside, before starting.
But the door hasn’t closed
on using Hangar 3 yet, said Port CEO Hank Bynaker, who’s been meeting
with city officials to see what can be done to make the structure suitable for
the operation.
Allen, who said he has to
hire engineers to ensure Hangar 3 will be suitable, hopes to start work on the
Cap’n Oscar within a month, adding that the cleaning, scrapping and dismantling
process should take about a week. Then the review by the Port and the general
public would begin.
Keeping
track
Lori Durheim, a regular
watchdog of Port operations, asked who monitors Blue Ocean’s activities. Allen
said the Department of Environmental Quality in Oregon and the Washington
Department of Ecology monitor, adding that he’s likely to get lots of attention
during the first vessel work from both environmental and governmental
organizations.
“It’s in our best interest
to do well by them,” said Allen. “We have to get contracts from them. We want
to be on their preferred vendor list.”
He keeps a watch list of
substances like asbestos and PCBs, adding that old inventory left in the boat
often poses the biggest hazard.
“We’re trying to get
registered as a green ship recycling facility,” he said of his operation,
disassociating it from the haphazard shipbreaking yards of Alang, India,
Brownsville and others where vessels are simply run aground and torn apart with
little environmental or safety concerns.
Nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) such as Seattle-based Basel Action Network and Greenpeace
created the Green Ship Recycling Standard in 2008 through their joint
organization, the NGO Platform on Shipbreaking. It seeks “to establish an
environmentally sound management and methodology in shipbreaking and recycling
of ships.”
Referring to instances
such as the $20-million cleanup of the sunken Davy Crockett in Camas, Wash.,
and the $5.4-million cleanup of the fire-gutted and sunken Deep Sea in Seattle,
Allen said his operation is trying to be proactive.
Starting as
a money-loser
Leon Jackson asked about
the owners of boats.
“There’s 300 to 400
vessels like this in Washington and in Oregon that are abandoned and sinking in
the river,” said Allen, adding that owners will often buy moorage in a marina
or Port before leaving them.
Jackson asked Allen how
much the Cap’n Oscar will cost to dismantle. Allen said it would likely take
$20,000 out of his pocket, but he’d continue doing small vessels for proof of
his method’s merits if needed. The operation can turn a profit, he said, once
he can get the vessels in place for free from the public or private entities
trying to dispose of them.
Ted Thomas, another
regular meeting attendee, asked Allen if he had thought about connecting rail
to ship metal from Tongue Point.
“That’s down the road,”
said Allen, who would like to gradually increase the size of vessels over time.
“We need to prove that we can do this one first.”
There’s no set timeline
for when Blue Ocean could start and no agreement with the Port.
Source: Coast
River Business Journal. 22 August 2011
http://www.crbizjournal.com/news/blue-ocean-wants-to-recycle-not-break-region-s-derelict/article_5d2ae4d4-0b79-11e3-b78c-001a4bcf887a.html
