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| Concerns Raised Over Breaking Up Ships | |||
| 2007-07-07 | |||
| Water-quality officials and environmentalists raised concerns Friday over the Bush administration's abrupt decision to move full-steam ahead with breaking up old warships rotting in California's "mothball fleet." The federal Maritime Administration announced Thursday that it would next month lift its moratorium on disposing of the ships. A collection of more than 50 troop transports, tankers and other vessels are rusting in limbo northeast of San Francisco. Such a step would set in motion the towing of some vessels from Suisun Bay, a shallow estuary, to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, where the warships would be scrubbed of sea life before being hauled to a ship-breaking facility in Texas. That scrubbing causes toxic paint to flake off into the water, and that is what worries environmentalists and state water-quality regulators. "It looks like they're using San Francisco Bay waters as a dumping ground," said Michael Wall, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council who has followed the issue.
Bloom said he was disappointed that the agency intended to scrub the warships at Alameda, a military base near Oakland that was shuttered a decade ago and portions of which are currently Superfund cleanup sites. The ship-scrubbing could complicate ongoing cleanup efforts, he said.
Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, said his agency - charged with enforcing clean-water standards - does not want to demand such permits from the Maritime Administration. Insisting on permits would slow the removal of the ships from Suisun Bay, Wolfe said. "We would much rather come to an agreement with them on what are the best management practices they'd use" for scrubbing the warships, Wolfe said. Still, Wolfe said he had several concerns about the Maritime Administration's announcement. Just last week, staff for the agency's head, Sean T. Connaughton, had pledged to provide the state with the results of tests the administration had conducted on a contaminant-containment system used on ships in Virginia, he said. The system uses six-foot-wide scrubbers to filter the paint-laden water, Wolfe said. The Maritime Administration also had promised that hull cleaning in the bay area would start with a pilot program. The project as described in Connaugton's letter makes no provision for a "pause" to study the possible pollution generated by the first few ships, Wolfe said. Wolfe said he also wants answers about the maintenance of dozens of ships that would remain indefinitely in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet. Even under the most optimistic projections, the Maritime Administration only has the budget to move 15 old ships out of three facilities nationwide in the next year, Wolfe said. That is the same number that Connaughton pledged to move out of Suisun Bay within a year. That would still leave nearly 40 decaying. The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board was preparing a letter to the Maritime Administration to inquire about those concerns, Wolfe said. 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 because of budget shortfalls, a shortage of facilities that can dismantle the giant ships and environmental concerns. Recently the Maritime Administration reached agreements with Virginia and Texas that paved the way for cleaning to resume there.
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| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #9 San Diego Bay has had it's share of environmental damage from the ship work. This is NOT a lefty issue IMNSHO. Adequate care to contain the debris has to be maintained. In CA's situation, the Regional Water Quality Board and Coastal Commission will enforce it. Usually, I hate these two - they are unregulated 'enviro-nazis'. In this case, these long-term hazardous materials need to be contained, and I don't mean by shipping them to TX, LA, MS or elsewhere |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-07-07 20:58 |
| #8 Tow them way out to sea, use them for target practice. End of problem. |
| Posted by: Rambler 2007-07-07 19:22 |
| #7 It's our own damned stupid regulations that are causing the problem. If we didn't have laws that required us to remove all "hazardous" materials from the ships before scrapping, we could actually MAKE money selling these ships to Bangla or India for scrap. As it is, it now costs upward of 1 million to scrap a ship. Damned ridiculous, IMO. |
| Posted by: Mac 2007-07-07 18:49 |
| #6 No, we lesser states are for producing oil and gas. For Florida, which won't allow drilling off their coast primarily because they think rigs 30 miles offshore would disturb the tourists (and rich coastal residents whose yachts leak more oil than we spill). But they are glad to take that nasty old hydrocarbon produced through the marshes of a second-class state like Louisiana (actually a third world state, but that's beside the point.) |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-07-07 16:57 |
| #5 No Glenmore, that's what us lesser states are for. No doubt some San Franciscan group will suggest that the ships be scraped in Wyoming. That would create jobs, right? |
| Posted by: James 2007-07-07 16:50 |
| #4 Let 'em rust in place. See whether they disappear before the pacific plate breaks off. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-07-07 15:34 |
| #3 If it's unsafe to scrub the bottoms in California then I guess the ships should just stay there to shed their paint naturally. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-07-07 14:49 |
| #2 The "Toxic Paint" is an anti-fouling paint designed to reduce fouling by marine life, such as barnicles etc, they slow doen a ship and cause much greater fuel usage to overcome the added drag (Hull no longer smooth) It's usualy poisionous to barnicles, etc, that's the whole idea. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-07-07 12:21 |
| #1 This should have been doen a long LONG time ago. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2007-07-07 11:59 |