Posted on 03/31/2010 7:17:15 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Reporting from San Francisco - After years of legal wrangling, the federal government agreed Wednesday to remove a fleet of mothballed military ships that has dropped tons of heavy metal pollution into a waterway northeast of San Francisco.
As part of a settlement with environmental groups, the U.S. Maritime Administration said it will remove 52 obsolete and decaying vessels -- nicknamed the Ghost Fleet -- from the estuary between the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Five others have been removed since November.
The agency plans to get rid of the 25 worst offenders in less than 2 1/2 years; the entire decaying armada is scheduled to be removed from Suisun Bay by September 2017. ..
"We are following through on our commitment to clean and maintain these vessels in an environmentally sound manner," said David Matsuda, acting administrator of the maritime agency. "We are moving expeditiously to remove the worst-polluting ships first and diligently moving to clean the rest."
Officials say it is likely that all of the ships will be towed out of the bay and recycled for scrap.
The ships already have shed more than 20 tons of heavy metals into the bay, including lead, zinc, copper and cadmium, said Michael Wall, chief litigator for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. If they are not cleaned up, they could lose as much as 50 tons more.
"Many of these ships have been moored there since the Vietnam War with no maintenance," said Wall, who estimates that the cleanup could cost more than $100 million. "The paint, loaded with heavy metals, has been flaking off and polluting the bay."
Congress issued three deadlines for the maritime agency to clean up the Ghost Fleet, Wall said, but the agency "violated all of them."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I too will miss them but have fond memories of all the great action we had fishing that place!
Hey me too. The ship looked great and you could see the enormous tourist attraction a Battleship is.
You’d think Obama would have hustled them right out of there, if their pollution was affecting the area.
My father is a former USS Iowa naval officer - he said he'd rather the ship be sunk than become the museum of gays in the military when that was put forth.
San Francisco is lost.
As to the repairs on turret 2 though they were fully funded and authorized they were never fully completed. Some of the machinery (probably optical range-finders were repaired but never reinstalled. Depending on the part the Navy either stored it on the ship or in a depot.
Long Beach would be perfect. I agree, SF is not a likely spot for anything having to do with defending our country.
As we saw when a Duluth, MN group tried to sponsor the heavy cruiser Des Moines as a tourist attraction, there are a certain group of Americans who hate America and want us to become just another second class European socialist sh*thole.
I think the Des Moines was finally scrapped.
The city will cheer when the ships are gone and then bitch and scream because the jobs of the maintainers will also go away.
OK, we drove from the Vallejo/Benicia side, going to Concord. I guess it is hard to see from that span, and when we came back, it was dark, so I guess I missed them. We were talking about the ships at the time, that is why I was looking so hard. Maybe when we return from Concord in the day time, I will be able to see them.
USAF
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