Bay Area “Ghost Fleet” finally being scrapped
A fleet of old, rotting warships shedding toxic paint into the water near San Francisco Bay will be cleaned up and recycled under a new plan announced by federal officials.
Deputy Secretary of Transportation John Porcari said the government has already awarded contracts to dispose of two World War II-era cargo ships from the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet.
The group of more than 70 mostly obsolete vessels in Suisun Bay has been at the center of a nearly three-year deadlock between state water regulators and the federal government, which manages the fleet.
Porcari said the ships will be cleaned in dry-dock — not in the bay — alleviating state officials’ concerns about additional water pollution…
California officials fought a Bush administration plan to clean the ships where they were anchored, arguing that the process would cause paint laden with heavy metals to flake off into the bay. They also filed suit against the federal government claiming the paint flaking off the ships as they idle put the fleet in violation of the federal Clean Water Act.
You know how much cooperation that got from the Compassionate Conservatives.
Of the 57 ships slated for the scrap heap, Porcari said the 25 most decrepit vessels would be disposed first. The process would take several years owing to the limited space in dry-dock facilities, he said…
The country’s three major reserve fleets, including one in Beaumont, Texas, and another near Newport News, Va., were once maintained to return to active duty in case of war or disaster. Over time, many ships fell into disrepair and became a financial and environmental burden.
In Suisun Bay, the aging hulks tied together in rows have become a landmark visible from a heavily traveled commuter bridge. They are known together as the “ghost fleet” or the “mothball fleet.”
It’s bloody depressing to reflect upon the fact that the several decades of my life have mostly been lived inside the belly of the beast that threatened as much of the world as it pretended to protect. Preparation for foreign war It has always been so important to our economic barons that we’ve maintained floating scrapheaps like this – “just in case” – of what?
Just in case our benevolent leaders decided we need to ship tens of thousands of our soldiers abroad to kill hundreds of thousands of people trying to live out their own lives in a land not so “enlightened”.
