Coos Bay is among three Oregon ports a Chesapeake, Va., company toured this fall in looking to site a shipbreaking facility. Bay Bridge Enterprises plans to invest $4 million in a West Coast plant to dismantle old military vessels. The company's president toured Coos Bay in September, but unimproved sites here would require too long a development timeline. The following two-part story looks at the controversy that erupted in Newport, when port officials announced last month they were days away from signing off on a facility on industrial property near the Newport waterfront.

Port of Newport staffers thought they were doing a good thing.

They wooed a Virginia-based company away from Coos Bay and Astoria. The company offered the promise of 100 to 125 industrial jobs.

Bay Bridge Enterprises LLC wants to site a shipbreaking facility to cut apart old military ships for recycling. There's a 59-vessel fleet of them rusting in Suisun Bay near Benicia, Calif.

The company is doing such work now in Chesapeake, Va., where Bay Bridge and other companies are carving away at another mothballed fleet. The big fear is that should a hull fail on even one or two of the decades-old vessels, a cloud of toxins could be released into the James River. The federal government has almost 200 such vessels in ghost fleets nationwide.

Bay Bridge's workers clean toxins out of the big vessels, some of which are longer than Marshfield High School's football field. Cranes then pull chunks of metal hulks from the water, and welders cut them up to be trucked out for recycling.

And what might have appeared to be a similar slam-dunk project for Newport is dunked all right - but in controversy.

“We continue to support the jobs they're offering,” Port of Newport General Manager Don Mann said last week, with his voice retreating into an unmistakenly ironic chuckle.

Deadly toxins

There were 250 people crowding into the Newport port commission's public meeting last week on Bay Bridge. The shipbreaking facility would be situated on unused land the port leases next to an existing liquid natural gas storage facility.

The meeting lasted five and half hours. A second meeting the following night brought in 50 more onlookers and the port commission decided to postpone signing a letter of intent with Bay Bridge until sometime in January.

“We're trying to answer some questions from the public,” Mann said.

Those questions center on environmental issues. As the military abandons the ships for newer confines, it leaves behind vessels harboring asbestos in insulation, piping, adhesives and valve packing, according to OSHA and U.S. Maritime Administration documents. There are polychlorinated biphenyls (cancer-causing PCBs), lead/chromate paint, heavy metals and residual fuel; even potentially invasive species.

Bay Bridge deals with all of those substances at its Virginia facility, operating under what the company and federal officials characterize as stringent agreements with federal agencies. The shipbreaking yard undergoes recurring inspections. And workers clad in protective gear are expected to remove hazards - every drop and fiber.

Those hazardous materials then are taken away by other companies for treatment and disposal.

“We've never been cited for environmental violations - zero,” said Bay Bridge CEO Mike Dunavant.

That's no consolation to opponents in Newport.

Fears for the future

“These ships are laden with enormous quantities of harmful and toxic materials,” said Newport resident Frank Pisciotta, of the newly formed Friends of Yaquina Bay.

Pisciotta makes it clear to say he appreciates the efforts of Newport's port commissioners for exploring every idea for bringing in jobs. But this one's a stupid idea, he said.

He worries about asbestos fibers picked up by coastal winds and blown around town.

If dioxins or metals or other substances are released into the bay, the fear is they would outright damage the bay or concentrate on up the food chain. That's called bioaccumulation.

“There are so many toxins that are exquisitely toxic. ... They are more soluable in lipids and cell membranes,” he said.

The Association of Northwest Steelheaders has expressed worries about the potential for an oil spill and invasive species, such as the environmentally and economically destructive mitten crab.

“They are not going to scrape these ships off before they tow them up here,” said the Steelheaders' Greg Harlow. “Whatever's on them is on the way here.”

Phil Hutchinson, the executive director of the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce, agrees with people who don't want to see anything damage Yaquina Bay or hurt its thriving tourism.

“There's no evidence that's going to be the case,” he said.

But some Newport residents want more than assurances. The Oregon Coast Aquarium and nearby Hatfield Marine Science Center draw what the aquarium considers to be high-quality water from the bay. Officials at both facilities fear pollution runoff, or worse, a catastrophic oil spill.

“Of course the potential exists currently for a spill, but it appears this operation would increase our risk of experiencing such an event considerably,” aquarium President Dale Schmidt wrote to the port. “What assurances might we seek from the firm that they would financially assist us in such a situation?”

Newport's port manager and his staff will be working in the coming weeks to answer this and the many other questions. But Mann said the port's main job is attracting business. The Bay Bridge project offers an ace for Newport, which like Coos Bay, has struggled to stay afloat in the shipping industry.

“It's become a political battle over the years to persuade the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge,” said the chamber's Hutchinson.

There aren't log ships anymore or industrial vessels coming and going as in years past. A shipbreaking facility would reinforce the need for channel dredging, which would bring peace of mind to commercial and recreational fishermen.

Pisciotta, however, doesn't think anyone should rest easy until the community gets expert assessments of the implications of a shipbreaking facility in Newport.

Coming Tuesday: Oregon's DEQ has no experience with shipbreaking operations.