Photo by Steve Lane
Posted on 03/29/2011 6:01:50 AM PDT by Bean Counter
Contractors are now planning to dismantle the beached and broken Davy Crockett right where it sits.
Workers will encircle the 431-foot barge with a cofferdam, forming an enclosed area, and take it apart piece by piece. The original plan of floating it away to a dry dock proved to be untenable, marking another setback in an operation that’s already the most expensive shipwreck in Washington history.
Until this week, federal and state authorities had been planning to cut the ship in two and float both halves away to a dry dock.
But officials said they were unable to reach agreements with local shipyards.
“Unfortunately, the efforts to gain utilization of the local dry docks for destruction of the Crockett were unsuccessful due to a litany of safety, complex environmental and liability issues,” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Daniel LeBlanc said.
Instead, contractors will encircle the vessel with 850 feet of metal sheet pilings to allow workers to safely dismantle the ship while containing pollution.
Construction of the cofferdam will begin as soon as Friday.
The sheet pilings and a secondary silt barrier will enable contractors to cut apart the Crockett while minimizing the risk of PCB-tainted oil or bunker fuel escaping into the river, state and federal officials said in a conference call on Monday.
But it will be expensive.
The operation had already consumed $9.5 million as of Monday, LeBlanc said, and it currently has the ability to tap another $4 million.
Costs have risen throughout the saga, which began two months ago after the Coast Guard ordered owner Brett Simpson of Ellensburg to remove oil and garbage aboard the damaged ship. Simpson had been attempting to scrap the vessel while it was afloat, but the process caused it to buckle and partially sink.
On Jan. 27, three days after the Coast Guard assumed Simpson complied with its order, oil-spill specialists with the state Department of Ecology traced a sheen 15 miles upriver to the Davy Crockett.
The Coast Guard then federalized the response.
The cleanup is being funded by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a federal fund created by a tax on petroleum products. Simpson has not participated in the cleanup and is the subject of a parallel investigation by federal authorities.
LeBlanc said officials won’t have a final cost estimate at least until the lead contractor — Seattle-based Ballard Diving & Salvage — submits a formal destruction plan later this week.
“Once we get the plan for the destruction phase, that will give us a better idea,” LeBlanc said. “Following the removal of the vessel, we will then have a disposal plan for steel and oily water, a follow-up sampling of sediment within the cofferdam and remediation cost to restore the environment in that location.”
The contractor’s best estimate was to finish the operation in 16 weeks, LeBlanc said.
Ron Holcomb, on-scene coordinator for the Washington Department of Ecology, said Ballard has been asked to procure the biggest possible crane to reduce the number of cuts. The idea is to load big chunks of the vessel aboard a waiting barge.
“This cofferdam, when installed, will provide a very high level of environmental protection around the Davy Crockett,” Holcomb said.
The sheet pilings are 3/8 of an inch thick, with 25-inch-wide interlocking joints. The joints won’t be watertight, but the cofferdam combined with the secondary nonpermeable silt barrier should effectively trap pollutants as contractors work. LeBlanc said the cofferdam will take 12 days to install.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is planning to set lighted buoys to designate a 300-foot safety zone around the vessel.
“We did have some encroachment of recreational fishermen a couple of weeks ago,” LeBlanc said. “Since the salmon season has kicked into gear now, we’re concerned about their safety and also the safety of the workers at the site.”
The recovery effort has already eclipsed the cost of removing the S.S. Catala from the beach at Ocean Shores in 2006.
That shipwreck actually occurred in 1965, but was exposed three decades later by shifting sands. When oil was discovered entombed aboard the 229-foot vessel, the state Department of Ecology embarked on what became the most expensive maritime cleanup in state history — $7.2 million.
The Davy Crockett is already costlier.
“It’s much more complicated here, where everything is on water,” Holcomb said.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.
Oregon and Washington *ping*
That pic reminds me of living in New Orleans in the late 60’s, early 70’s. The Mississippi River shore line between the water and levee was littered with old barge hulks washed ashore during hurricane some years earlier.
It was a Tom Sawyer life for a 10-year old back in the day when you could leave home after breakfast, explore all day and be home for dinner with the only questions being, “where did you go today?”....’umm...went to the woods with Tommy and built a fort’.
How do you “own” a shipwreck that occurred 46 years ago and was buried under sand until 16 years ago? Gee, can I buy the USS Arizona? Will I then be responsible for cleaning up the oil from it?
The article could have been a little more clear. The S.S. Catala referenced in the paragraph above was the one that sank in 1965 and was cleaned up in 2006.
If I remember correctly the Davy Crockett is a barge that was converted out of a WWII Liberty ship. Hence the name.
Why even dismantle it, since it has been there so long anyway?
Because the government has convinced everyone that the oil on these boats is the most toxic substance on earth. Look at the millions of dollars they get to spend.
Yes, the former SS Davy Crockett was indeed a WWII Liberty Ship, and was built in Texas in 1946.
BBell, it has to be removed because it is full of contaminated oil and is leaking like a submarine with screen doors. A couple of weeks ago they found the bilges covered with ancient bunker fuel that is now the consistency of peanut butter. Because of the illegal scrapping attempt, the hull is ruptured and leaking directly into the Columbia River. Its now an official Federal Emergency Response site because of the leaking oil, and is why no drydock operator in his right mind would allow that leaky POS to contaminate his dock.
In addition, there are at least 10 other old hulls along the lower Columbia that are at the same risk of illegal scrapping. You simply cannot scrap a floating vessel. Even in Pakistan and India, they know you have to get the ship out of the water before you scrap it, and they run the ships up on the beach.
$9.5 Million so far, and there is no telling how much oil is underneath the damned thing....
There we were - me and Davey Crockett - shoulder to shoulder and backs to the wall.
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...
Salvage rights.
Sorry if I misunderstood; this is pretty serious....
A closely related story, for background reading...
Streamlined Art Deco Ferry KALAKALA listing in Tacoma
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2696322/posts?page=1
A few more details: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/spills/incidents/DavyCrockett/DavyCrockett.html
This appears to be in the Columbia River in the Portland, Oregon area.
“How do you “own” a shipwreck that occurred 46 years ago and was buried under sand until 16 years ago? Gee, can I buy the USS Arizona? Will I then be responsible for cleaning up the oil from it?”
More environmental extremism. If every drop of oil leaked at once, its harm would be unnoticeable six months from now. Thousands of torpedoed tankers burned and sank in WWII releasing billions of barrels; net effect, unnoticed only months later. The cost of vaporizing the ship with explosives would be negligible. But the money gained by contractors to damn it, dismember it, is obscene and the entire reason for doing it the “environmentally safe way.”
“General Blather” is one of the best names for an anonymous FR troll that I’ve seen in quite some time. Do you work very hard at remaining so blatantly ignorant of the world around you or does it just come to you naturally?
Meth-heads and scrapmetal. Why do they work so hard avioding work for so little money?
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