Posted on 11/24/2003 5:21:36 PM PST by Dog Gone
It's seen its last days of combat, but a 58-year-old aircraft carrier docked in Beaumont may become the Holy Grail of artificial reefs.
Texas and several other coastal states are expected to do battle over the USS Oriskany, the first carrier to be donated by the Navy for use as an artificial reef.
Applications were due Thursday to the U.S. Maritime Administration. For state reef builders, the competition is akin to that for a Super Bowl or the Olympics.
"I can't think of any place that has sunk an aircraft carrier," said Paul Hammerschmidt, the director of Texas' artificial reef program, which is managed by the state parks and wildlife department.
"It will be a flagship of the ships-to-reef program in any state," he said.
Texas, which began its reef program in 1989, has already sunk tugboats, oil platforms, and smaller wartime vessels into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Oriskany, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars, would be by far the largest object sunk off the Texas coast. It's slightly longer than three football fields and more than 150 feet tall and wide. If Texas is chosen as its new home, Hammerschmidt said, the ship would be sunk off the Corpus Christi coast.
The only previous options for retired warships were donation to a museum, sinking, scrapping, or leasing and selling them to other countries, according to Rita Wilks, a Navy spokeswoman. With no interested parties, the Oriskany -- launched from the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard in 1945 -- would likely have ended up in a scrap yard, she said.
"It's a really good thing for the Navy to do," Wilks said. "It's harder to scrap a ship than to use it as an artificial reef."
Before being sent to the winning state, the Oriskany will be cleaned to remove environmental contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and oil.
A sad end for a gallant ship...
But better than the breakers!
Dirty little secret: Some of the veery best artificail reefs are also known as 'oil rigs'. The enviro-whackos do not want you to know that instead of killing things, oil rigs attract and provide habitat for a LOT of fish. It has become a problem keeping fishermen from tieing up to them to fish.
Forgive my ignorance, but is the Gulf deep enough that this will not pose a hazard to navigation, submarines or fishing nets?
The sea bottom drops off gradually from the edge of the shore, but it gets plenty deep and eventually gets extremely deep. Wherever it is sunk, it will be well marked.
Your point is accurate, except that what are sunk are actually "oil platforms."
It's a minor correction, but "rigs" refer to the machinery that drill wells, while "platforms" are the permanent production facilities that are built after the rigs find something. They are production facilities, while rigs are generally towed away to go drill somewhere else.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
Aircraft carrier's destiny is to be an artificial reefTexas wants to sink it off Corpus Christi; other states want it too
By Matthew Sturdevant Caller-Times
November 20, 2003
An 888-foot Korean War-era aircraft carrier will arrive, likely in early December, at the Port of Corpus Christi to be cleaned before it's sunk and made into an artificial reef.
If the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department gets its way, the USS Oriskany will be sunk 30 to 40 miles offshore of Corpus Christi. But Texas is one of at least three states that will compete to get the ship as an offshore diving attraction and reef habitat.
"It could be as many as 20 (states)," said Paul Hammerschmidt, director of the parks department's artificial reef program.
Making the ship into a reef has two benefits, Hammerschmidt said. The ship will form a large home for many species of fish and shellfish, and it could serve as an attraction for scuba divers. Hammershmidt hopes to sink the ship in one of two spots that are each about 215 feet deep. The ship is about 160 feet tall from the keel to the top of the tower, he said, so it will be accessible to divers. "There's no question it will be a tourist attraction," Hammerschmidt said.
The USS Oriskany is the last of the Essex Class carriers, the same type as Corpus Christi's museum ship, the Lexington. The Oriskany was used during the Korean and Vietnam wars from 1950 to 1976.
The Oriskany is expected to arrive in early December at the Port of Corpus Christi for a $2.18 million cleaning. A Florida company, Resolve Marine Services, and a Brownsville company, Esco Marine, were jointly awarded a contract by the U.S. Navy to remove oily solvents from the ship's innards, according to federal contract information.
Expensive to clean
Cleaning the ship is expensive because there are hundreds of tanks and bilge compartments that need to be emptied, said Denise Johnston, manager of government contracts for Resolve Marine Services. The ship also has chemicals and substances that are regulated by the federal government for special disposal, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, mercury and asbestos, she said.
Both cleaning companies are in negotiations with port officials to bring the ship to Corpus Christi's port for as long as six months, but the U.S. Coast Guard has to approve the plan first, said Al Speight, manager of industrial development at the port. If the Coast Guard approves the plan, a tugboat will pull the Oriskany from its resting place in a Maritime Fleet in Beaumont to Corpus Christi's inner harbor.
After that, the state that wins the ship will have to pay about $500,000 to cut holes in it and weld hatches so it can be sunk, and so it will be safe for scuba divers, Hammerschmidt said.
'A big positive'
"That's a big positive for the Gulf of Mexico," said Paul Montagna, a marine ecologist at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas.
The ship will create a large home for barnacles and mussels, and then small fish will make it a home and finally predator fish, like sharks, will show up, Montagna said.
"I would guess it would take two to three years before it would be fully developed," Montagna said.
Montagna, who is a scuba diver, said the ship might be too deep for diving if it's in 200 feet of water. But Hammerschmidt said the flight deck would be only about 108 feet below the surface, and the tower would be about 50 feet below the surface.
If the ship is accessible to divers, it could have an annual economic impact of $92 million, according to a recent report by the News-Journal in Pensacola, Fla., a newspaper in a city that is competing for the ship.
Commissioned in 1950
The USS Oriskany has a long history and an active following. About 900 former U.S. Navy soldiers are members of the Oriskany Reunion Association, a group of people who were stationed on the ship from the time it was commissioned on Sept. 25, 1950, until it was retired in September 1976.
Lee Puglia of Hooksett, N.H., the secretary and former president of the association, said people lobbied to make the ship into a museum many years ago. But the Oriskany was sold to a scrap-metal company that eventually went out of business, he said. Now, after years of neglect, the ship is in bad shape.
"It's a hunk of rust," he said. "I'd rather see it sunk."
However, he and the association say Corpus Christi is not where it should be sunk. About 99 percent of the association's members want the ship to be sunk offshore of Pensacola, Fla., because the city is the birthplace of U.S. Navy aviation and has a rich naval history, Puglia said.
"Wherever and whenever it's sunk, there's going to be a hell of a lot of guys out there," Puglia said. "We want to make sure she gets a proper burial."
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