Report: Mothball fleet drops tons of toxic metals into Suisun Bay
Old ships hemorrhaging pollutants into water, prompting a recommendation of immediate attention
By Thomas Peele
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
06/17/2007
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The Times obtained the report from Arc Ecology. It obtained a copy under a Freedom of Information request earlier this year.
Saul Bloom, the group's executive director, said it is outrageous that such a critical document had not been brought to the attention of Carter and other administration higher-ups in the four months since the contractor turned it in.
"It's bureaucratic incompetence. It's their damn report," Bloom said.
The head of the firm that performed the testing said the results were turned over to the Maritime Administration's San Francisco office in February. "I was under the impression that it went to Washington (D.C.)," said Masood Ghassemi of R&M Environmental Engineering and Infrastructure.
The test results will likely prompt California regulators to look more closely at the Suisun fleet.
"This is new information that we didn't have before. We are very interested in getting this document. It appears risk assessments should be done," said Shin-Roei Lee, a watershed division chief for the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.
60-year history
The federal government began stockpiling surplus ships in Suisun Bay more than 60 years ago, at the end of World War II. The Maritime Administration is a civilian agency that is part of the Department of Transportation, although it stores war ships for the Navy alongside merchant vessels.
At its height, the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet contained hundreds of vessels. A 1959 photo shows 324 ships riding anchor, lashed together side by side in 14 rows.
This month fewer than 80 vessels remain there, according to Maritime Administration documents. About 55 of them are either classified as ready for disposal or being readied. The classification process includes a lengthy review of a ship's historic value and the stripping of useful parts from it. While the ships ride anchor in the bay, sometimes for decades, little or no maintenance is performed on them.
The Maritime Administration has missed congressional deadlines to dispose of all obsolete vessels, a result of a lack of funding and its own cumbersome processes. It pays companies to scrap the vessels, a cost to taxpayers that often exceeds $1 million per ship from Suisun Bay because there are no disposal operations on the West Coast so the vessels must be towed through the Panama Canal to Texas.
Last year the Coast Guard added a new hurdle to the process. It began requiring that the underwater portions of the ships' hulls be cleaned before they could be removed from local waters to stop the spread of non-native or invasive species.
When two World War II Victory ships were cleaned in Richmond last summer, large portions of metals came off the hulls and were left in the water, according to government documents. The water quality control board then began investigating the cleaning process as a cause of pollution.
In December, the board's executive officer required that the Maritime Administration comply with state anti-pollution laws when cleaning ships. Specifically, he mandated that the Maritime Administration capture any materials that come off the hulls during cleaning.
The Maritime Administration suspended its ship disposal program in February as it searched for a way to comply. In an April memo, its officials said they planned to make "a good-faith effort" to use such a system but did not guarantee it. The matter remains unresolved.
Meanwhile, only Naval vessels can be removed from the Suisun Bay fleet because they are exempt from the hull-cleaning requirements.
Many of the vessels in the bay are in poor condition, taking on water and listing. Water needs to be periodically pumped from some to keep them afloat. Most are severely rusted, and Maritime Administration documents show they are laden with tons of PCBs, asbestos, fuel oil and other toxic substances.
Lawsuit likely
Little or no testing to measure the fleet's environmental impact had occurred until the report issued in February.
Based on its results, Bloom said his organization is "very, very likely" to take the Maritime Administration to court soon to try to force further testing and remediation.
Bloom said the report raises questions about whether fish caught in the area are safe for human consumption and how far polluted paint chips might travel from the fleet.
"People catch fish out there on a weekly basis," Bloom said. "There might be people fishing out there who don't know this."
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