No, its not about jobs, it is about a bunch of meth heads who went out there last Fall, and in two months managed to illegally gut the inside of that hull to the point that it collapsed, sank and started leaking oil.
Are you suggesting that it is perfectly OK to have a 15 mile long oil slick on a major US River?? Should that have been ignored and allowed to just leak all the way to the sea??
The crew who was illegally scrapping this hulk are probably the same guys who are usually out stealing guard rails, disassembling bridges, light poles and stealing copper wire so they can sell it for hard cash. They were working without any permits, the boat was illegally moored on State land, they had no safety gear whatsoever and are lucky they didn’t get themselves killed.
In addition, the owner has another barge he was illegally scrapping up in Dallesport, Washington; also along the Columbia River. He shoved it close to the bank of the River, and bulldozed a dirt ramp into the water so the crew could get the scrap off. That effort was suspended as well, and it too will have to be removed some day at public expense.
This is a serious problem that is costing US Taxpayers a lot of money to clean up, and it defies single sentence snarky answers...