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Ghost Fleet inspection shows welcome progress

2010-09-03T17:44:57Z

Michael Wall, Senior Attorney, San Francisco

I'm sharing this space today with guest-blogger and legal fellow Jon Wiener.

I grew up gazing at the Suisun Bay Ghost Fleet through the window of my parents’ car as we would cross the Benicia Bridge on our way to the mountains. Later, when I started riding Amtrak to visit friends and family, I was able to get a bit of a closer view. Even as an adult, I always thought the ships seemed majestic and mysterious.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I came to NRDC and learned that years of neglect had essentially turned the fleet of 57 Navy support ships into an unregulated, unpermitted toxic waste dump. As my colleague Michael Wall has blogged about previously, these historical icons had been leaching large amounts of lead paint and other heavy metals into the bay for decades. (This revelation was eerily similar to a disappointing discovery in my previous career as a reporter, when I learned that Moffett Field’s historic Hangar One, which I had toured as a young boy while attending Blue Angels shows, was polluting South Bay wetlands). This pollution continued in spite of Congressional mandates, environmental laws, and even some internal alarms. In fact, little happened until NRDC and its partners sued the U.S. Maritime Administration. Then, after years of fighting, MARAD—under the direction of a new administration—agreed to a court-ordered schedule to clean up and remove the ships.

Nonetheless, it was still quite the thrill last week when I finally set foot on the ships, as NRDC staff scientist Miriam-Rotkin Ellman and I joined San Francisco Baykeeper and the Regional Water Quality Control Board to endure triple-digit heat and check on MARAD's progress. What we saw was very encouraging.

As a result of our litigation, MARAD has already removed 10 of the ships in worst condition—including the World-War-II–era “Victory” ships such as the two pictured below—cleaned them in dry-dock, and sent them to recyclers.

An 11th ship was transferred to the Navy, and several more are slated for removal by the end of September—ahead of the court-ordered cleanup schedule, at least so far. MARAD crews have also swept and vacuumed up the piles of lead paint and other waste that, until recently, littered the ships’ decks and flowed into the Bay with every rain storm. MARAD continues to do regular maintenance, reducing the likelihood that this winter’s storms will wash yet more toxic paint debris into the Bay.

Paint chips and other waste on the deck of the President (at left in January 2009) were removed this spring under terms of the court-ordered settlement. Last week, MARAD crews performed maintenance sweeping and vacuuming on the President (at right) to prevent waste from accumulating again.

In April through June alone, MARAD crews removed several hundred large drums of hazardous waste, which the agency then sent to a permitted facility for proper disposal. The agency has also replaced missing screens on drains around the fleet, and installed protective “wattles”—semi-permeable tubes filled with walnut shells—to filter out waste as it approaches the drains. And an agency contractor has begun hydroblasting the upper hulls of ships to remove peeling paint before it can fall into the water.

This progress is welcome. It also highlights the senselessness of MARAD’s refusal to implement these simple protections sooner. By ignoring its responsibilities until we sued, MARAD allowed the environmental contamination to continue and drove up the costs of the cleanup. Indeed, the cleanup is far more expensive now that scrap metal prices have collapsed and so much waste has accumulated—initial sweeps of a single vessel’s deck took up to two weeks, in contrast with a day for follow-up maintenance. Two public agencies and several environmental groups also had to spend several years litigating over something MARAD should have done years ago. Most importantly, San Francisco Bay and its estuaries are now contaminated with more than 20 tons of heavy metals that should never have been released.

Still, late is better than never. Since the recent change in administration, and MARAD’s litigation loss, the agency has appeared genuinely committed to reversing the Suisun Bay fleet’s decades of neglect. Plenty more still needs to be done, and NRDC and its partners will be here to make sure it does. But the progress MARAD has shown is significant, and is an important step towards giving the Bay-Delta—along with the farmers, fishermen and other residents that depend on it—a chance to recover.

Goodbye, Ghost Fleet

2010-03-31T21:51:37Z

Michael Wall, Senior Attorney, San Francisco

This was a good day for the ecology of San Francisco Bay, the people of California, and the rule of law.

This morning, with scores of former military support ships rusting in the background, the U.S. Maritime Administration, NRDC, Arc Ecology, Baykeeper, and state regulators announced the settlement of a lengthy lawsuit over MARAD’s “ghost fleet.” Under the settlement, which is subject to Court approval, the Maritime Administration will clean up and permanently dispose more than fifty obsolete and decrepit ships, some of which have been moored in Suisun Bay with little or no maintenance since the Vietnam War.

The terms of the agreement require MARAD to:

Immediately clean up hazardous paint chips and debris that litter many of the vessels’ decks. Work has already begun – MARAD announced this morning that it has already removed tons of hazardous paint debris from vessel decks – and will be completed within 120 days of the settlement’s approval by the Court.
Clean the peeling toxic paint from the exteriors of ships within two years, and clean the 25 ships in worst condition in dry dock.
Remove all obsolete vessels for disposal by September 2017, starting with the worst ships first. This includes removal of 10 ships by September 30 of this year and 10 more within the next year. By 2013, all of the ships in the worst condition will be gone.
Conduct ongoing maintenance and sampling designed to ensure that the kinds of pollution problems that have occurred in the past never recur.

This aggressive schedule is a major victory for the health of the bay, and a significant reversal for MARAD in light of its history of violating clean water and hazardous waste laws. Evidence amassed during litigation had painted a damning portrait of an agency that knew it was violating the law and did not stop the violations.

In January, the Court ruled that MARAD was illegally discharging pollutants in violation of federal water pollution laws and illegally storing hazardous waste on the ships, in the middle of Suisun Bay. I wrote at the time that any plan to address the pollution from the fleet would have to be “prompt, thorough, and enforceable.” The schedule announced today is all of those things, and a major victory for the health of the Bay and the communities that depend on it. It reaffirms that when it comes to protecting the environment, no one is above the law – and especially not our own government.

Congressman George Miller (D-Martinez), who represents the district where the ships are located, opened this morning’s press conference at the Ghost Fleet site by noting the historic nature of the agreement. He recalled that his efforts to solve the problem had been met by a prior Administration with literally no cooperation. But he and others expressed satisfaction that the bitterness and acrimony of past years has been replaced with a clear path forward. After thirty months of hard-fought litigation, my colleagues and I couldn’t agree more. We look forward to working with the Obama Administration and MARAD as these ships are cleaned up and removed once and for all.

Judge: Ghost Fleet pollution illegal

2010-01-21T23:02:22Z

Michael Wall, Senior Attorney, San Francisco

For decades, the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) and its parent agency, the Department of Transportation (DOT), have moored dozens of decrepit and non-operational former military support vessels in San Francisco Bay and abandoned them to the ravages of time and weather, as seen in this B-roll. More than twenty tons of heavy metals – lead, cadmium, zinc, copper, and others neurotoxins – have already fallen off these vessels into the center of California’s fragile Bay-Delta, which provides critical habitat for numerous endangered and threatened species.

Today, a federal court in Sacramento, California, ruled that the ongoing pollution caused by MARAD’s neglect is illegal.

MARAD has known about this illegal toxic pollution for more than a decade, but had an affirmative policy of ignoring it until NRDC, and our partners Arc Ecology and Baykeeper, sued. As described in court filings, internal MARAD documents and testimony obtained through litigation reveal that MARAD has been aware since the late 1990s that Suisun Bay ships were discharging hazardous, lead-based paint to Suisun Bay.

For example, one internal memo from 1997 warned that “exfoliating paint on MARAD ships is an issue that must be addressed,” that “lead paint waste … will be classified as hazardous under RCRA,” and that discharges “are prohibited by federal, state, and local environmental regulations.” And in 2000, DOT’s inspector general reported that MARAD’s non-retention ships were “literally rotting and disintegrating” into the water. Yet when MARAD discovered the pollution, the agency made a conscious policy decision to do nothing to stop the discharge, failed to seek required permits, and continued to miss disposal deadlines set by acts of Congress.

There are two lessons in this story. The first is that the government itself sometimes acts as if it is above the law. The second is the power of litigation in the hands of private citizens to bring dysfunctional government into line.

Through our lawsuit, which the California Regional Water Quality Control Board ultimately joined, NRDC, Arc Ecology, and Baykeeper are accomplishing what even Congress found itself incapable of accomplishing. After the lawsuit was filed, MARAD began taking steps to remove a few of the most decrepit ships and to clean others. I blogged about this in October in my blog, Two vessels (almost) down, 55 to go. Much work remains to be done.

These measures are welcome, whether prompted by a change in Administration or the prospect of an imminent trial that could be prove embarrassing to a federal government that is supposed to enforce environmental laws rather than break them. But the work MARAD has done to date is not enough. MARAD has recently shown some signs of being willing to move further, faster. We hope that it will.

Today’s ruling underscores the need for MARAD to halt its illegal conduct immediately. If MARAD does not submit to a prompt, thorough, and enforceable plan to fix the problem, NRDC and its co-plaintiffs will seek an order requiring a cleanup when trial commences in June.

Ghost Fleet Images

2009-11-07T01:08:39Z

Michael Wall, Senior Attorney, San Francisco

A few recent pictures. (See my March and October '09 posts for background on the "ghost fleet" in Suisun Bay.)

Two vessels (almost) down, 55 to go. Much work remains to be done.

2009-10-22T22:20:08Z

Michael Wall, Senior Attorney, San Francisco

Today the U.S. Department of Transportation and U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) announced that two vessels from the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet will, at long last, be removed for disposal. This is good news. The marine paint on these two inoperable World War II-era hulks is so thick with toxic heavy metals that it is considered hazardous waste. This hazardous paint is peeling off. Some lies scattered on the vessels' decks, waiting to be blown or to fall into the waters of Suisun Bay. Much of this hazardous waste has already fallen off. MARAD now plans to tow these two vessels to dry dock for cleaning and then to a scrap yard for disposal, measures that MARAD claimed for years were impossible. All Californians - the millions who live near and cherish the Bay, the tens of millions who drink water pumped from the Bay-Delta estuary - can cheer, a little, that MARAD is finally moving to dispose of these two obsolete ships before they cause further harm to a deeply imperiled ecosystem.

**Paint peeling from the Rider Victory, one of the vessels MARAD is not removing**

Yet once these two ships are towed away, 55 ships will remain to be disposed. Each of those 55 ships is coated with toxic paint. Much of that paint is peeling - or has peeled - off, putting poisons in local waterways. How bad is this problem? In 2000, the Department of Transportation's Inspector General reported that MARAD's non-retention ships "are literally rotting and disintegrating" into the water. In 2007, a MARAD-commissioned analysis concluded that forty of the ships had already lost about twenty tons of lead, zinc, copper, and chromium into the environment. And in 1997, MARAD staff reported that, "If no action is taken, the ships will continue to age and corrode and ultimately may sink."

The pollution from and on these ships violates federal and state water pollution and hazardous waste laws. MARAD knows this. NRDC, Arc Ecology, and Baykeeper - ultimately joined by the State of California - sued MARAD over these violations two years ago. A court hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9. Today's announcement by MARAD comes more than twelve years after MARAD learned of the pollution problem in Suisun Bay, two years after MARAD was sued - and on the eve of that hearing.

Despite today's welcome announcement, MARAD has not yet committed to a concrete and enforceable timetable for cleaning and removing the remaining ships and has not stopped the ongoing pollution. Every day that goes by without an aggressive and comprehensive effort to clean the vessels is another day where paint full of lead and other metals continues to poison the ecosystem. That's a problem that needs to stop. San Francisco Bay cannot remain a dumping ground for toxic waste.

Mothball Fleet's Flaking Paint Poisons and Pollutes San Francisco Bay

2009-03-14T14:56:36Z

Michael Wall, Senior Attorney, San Francisco

There's a reason why most ocean-going vessels need regular paint jobs and maintenance. Old paint, exposed to weather, can peel or chip off. The toxic material in many vessels' paints can poison local waterways and ecosystems. That's why NRDC, Arc Ecology, and Baykeeper have sued the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) to halt the discharge of heavy-metal laden paint from more than fifty "rust-forsaken" former military ships that are moored in Suisun Bay. According to analysis commissioned by MARAD itself, those vessels have already dropped some twenty tons of heavy metals into the water.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a report on Thursday that looked at concentrations of metals right under this "ghost fleet." The NOAA study found some instances in which arsenic, copper, lead, and chromium levels near these ships were higher than levels in much of the rest of San Francisco Bay, but it did not recommend a cleanup of that sediment, in part because the contaminant concentrations were not much higher than the rest of San Francisco Bay. If rusted, lead-based paint remnants don't seem that toxic, this doesn't say much for the health of the Bay. NOAA's study also doesn't tell us much about the impact of these ships.

NOAA concedes that MARAD's ships are flaking toxic paint into Suisun Bay. The question is, what happens to that paint? NOAA looked right under the ships and found some paint, but not enough for NOAA to consider it a hotspot. Surprised? Not really.

Suisun Bay is a tidally-influenced river environment. Water, and sediment, are flowing downstream, into San Francisco Bay, and eventually, out the Golden Gate. The large paint flakes that are visibly peeling off these ships are likely to float downstream before they settle out. Indeed, NOAA itself agrees that contaminants from the fleet have migrated downstream outside the area they tested. And even if some paint settled into sediments near the ships, it won't stay there, because as NOAA also concedes, the sediment itself is moving downstream. Put another way, NOAA seems to have looked in the wrong place.

So how much does NOAA's study, which looked right under the ships, tell us about the paint pollution that lands further downstream? NOAA's study tells us nothing at all. What we do know is that, a bit further downstream, beyond the small area in which NOAA looked, elevated metals levels have been documented by other studies. Why didn't NOAA test there? Well, they say, if they had found a hotspot further away from the rusting MARAD ships, they would not know its source. That hotspot might be caused by any of the Bay's many polluters.

A degree of common sense is required here. There does not really seem to be a dispute that paint - lots of paint - is falling off these ships into the Bay. There also does not seem to be much dispute that the paint is toxic - it exceeds California's hazardous waste levels. That's a problem, and it needs to stop. That's why NRDC sued. Nothing in NOAA's study affects NRDC's suit because our suit doesn't seek to cleanup sediment under the ships. Instead, our suit seeks to stop the ongoing pollution, regardless where the pollution ends up. And that's as good an idea now as it was before NOAA's report.