Posted on 05/13/2002 12:22:39 PM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Virginia's two senators are urging Congress to approve $40 million next year -- nearly four times what President Bush wants to spend -- for getting rid of decrepit ships in the James River Reserve Fleet, also known as the Ghost Fleet.In a letter to the White House released Thursday, U.S. Sens. John W. Warner and George F. Allen said the 97 old ships moored off Fort Eustis in Newport News represent ``a clear and present environmental danger to the river and the coastline.''
A federal study last November said an oil spill could spread for 50 miles, from Jamestown Island to Portsmouth, if just two ships holding heavy oil were to break apart in a storm.
The study and its potential impacts on sensitive ecological features in the area were detailed in a recent series of articles in The Virginian-Pilot.
``Should a large oil spill occur, the results would require many millions more than would be required to retire the remaining fleet,'' the two Republican senators wrote to the president on May 1. ``It is imperative that we are proactive in order to prevent a future disaster.''
An aide to Warner said Thursday that boosting Ghost Fleet money is among the senator's top priorities this year.
``We're moving hard on this, and we're doing it on a broad front,'' the aide said.
The Bush administration has proposed giving $11.1 million next fiscal year to the U.S. Maritime Administration, a branch of the Transportation Department responsible for the James River fleet and two others in Texas and California.
Pushed by congressional representatives from Hampton Roads, the House Merchant Marine Panel last month recommended spending $20 million next year, including money to convert some ships to offshore fishing and diving reefs.
Warner and Allen said $40 million is necessary to get rid of the 16 worst ships in the Ghost Fleet that show the biggest threat to spill their contents of fuel, oil, asbestos, lead and toxic PCBs. The entire fleet holds about 7.7 million gallons of petroleum products in their steel bellies.
The government estimates that it costs $2.5 million to safely scrap and dismantle a junk vessel at an American shipyard.
Following several oil spills since 1998, the state of Virginia has been trying to persuade the Maritime Administration to at least pump waste oil off the most fragile ships. The federal agency has said it can't afford the cost of about $900,000 per pump-out.
Dozens of unwanted cargo and military support ships used to be sent overseas for disposal during the 1970s and '80s. That practice all but stopped in the mid-1990s with passage of regulations that sought to protect foreign laborers and environments from exposure to American ship wastes.
Warner and Allen also argue that, without increased spending, the Maritime Administration will not meet a congressional deadline of Sept. 30, 2006, for getting rid of more than 125 obsolete ships in the Virginia, Texas and California reserves.
Officials with the Maritime Administration have said they support the president's spending proposal but certainly will take any increased funding that Congress might approve.
A final budget is expected by October or November.
There's a fleet of ships that just sits at anchor in the James River. It is an idle fleet, one of three fleets maintained by the U.S. Maritime Administration. Officially, it is called the James River Reserve Fleet; unofficially, it is known as the dead fleet or the ghost fleet.
Records show that ships were put on reserve in the James River as early as 1898. Initially, there were two fleets — wooden ships anchored off Claremont and steel ships anchored off Mulberry Island. Maintenance workers at the time lived aboard ships for two weeks at a time.
The ships were coal burners, and all were activated during World Wars I and II. The fleet that was reestablished off Fort Eustis after the Second World War was composed largely of Liberty and Victory ships. At one time there were nearly 800 of these cargo ships.
Today, there are 97 merchant cargo ships in the James River Reserve Fleet. They await recall to service in a national emergency or to go through their natural life cycle and become scrap metal or an artificial fishing reef somewhere along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
Ships assigned to the Ready Reserve Force are kept in a state of moderate readiness and can be activated in a matter of days or weeks as they were during Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf. Ships were also withdrawn for the Korean War, the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 and the war in Vietnam.
The majority of ships in the James River Fleet are part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet, created in 1946. Most of these ships qualify as militarily useful, but not necessarily ready for rapid activation. Others have been downgraded as "scrappers."
The size of the James River Reserve Fleet has been dwindling. Five years ago there were about 145 ships in the fleet. Those that remain at anchor are in a continuous fight against rust and corrosion.
That takes money? I thought all it took was a big hole below the waterline.
A ship named after Clinton shouldn't be hauling garbage....
Not to mention that havoc caused by ghosts of old seadogs, dragging their chains through the streets of nearby towns and moaning such that a body can't get any sleep.
"Scooby Doo, Where Are You?"
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