This Nov. 15 photo from the Virginia DEQ shows a new area that Bay Bridge Enterprises established at its Chesapeake, Va., shipbreaking facility. Here, non-ferrous metals are cut and sorted. The Port of Newport is considering a similar facility. Contributed photo

Oil, asbestos, lead/chromate containing paint chips, cancer-causing PCBs, invasive plants and animals.

This is the stuff of environmental nightmares.

Fear of the pollutants also is fueling a group of Newport residents to organize in opposition to a proposed shipbreaking facility near their waterfront. All of the substances would be aboard ships brought out through San Francisco Bay and towed up the Pacific Ocean to a possible West Coast facility.

But the pollution fears are unwarranted, said the president of a Virginia company that wants to build the business to get rid of old military vessels. The company would provide a much-needed service to the federal government. And, he said, his company has a clean record, having done the same work for the past five years in Chesapeake, Va.

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

A clean record

It's true.

Neither the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ever issued a citation or warning to Bay Bridge. Then again, small shipbreaking facilities don't get a lot of attention from federal or state environmental officials, according to Crystal St. Clair-Canaii, an environmental specialist with Virginia DEQ.

“A small facility may only be inspected once throughout the (lifetime) of its operation,” said St. Clair-Canaii, who has inspected the company's indoor operation once.

The company is required to get a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit through the EPA - the big permit - though inspectors worry most about the big operations. Those operations work on big vessels, often many per year, with the work mostly being done on dry docks.

Bay Bridge is tiny

EPA has visited Bay Bridge's Chesapeake facility once in three years - in June 2004 - with the inspection finding no violations.

The company's workers, who are to follow strict OSHA and EPA protocol, remove the hazardous wastes from floating ships that are pulled into slips at its facility alongside the Elizabeth River, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary. Workers turn over those wastes to other companies and then they cut up the vessels for recycling.

“They're very well organized. They don't know when I'm coming. Their inspections are totally unannounced,” said Susan Mackert, water compliance inspector with the Virginia DEQ.

Mackert visits Bay Bridge about four times a year. Her job is to keep track of what happens outside the vessel, to ensure none of the potential pollutants get into the water. OSHA deals with the inside work.

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It's not a pretty facility, she said. It's a working scrapyard. In inspection reports this year, Mackert has commented about housekeeping efforts. Workers left two covered buckets of lube and a battery outside a building. She also mentioned that a failing, inwater retaining wall needed to be replaced. None rated as violations.

Apparently, no federal or state agencies check for invasive species that might be attached to the vessels, though the ships have been stored for years in a nearby river.

Bay Bridge has a general stormwater permit in Virginia. It's similar to the basic permit that would be required in Oregon.

Simple process

In Oregon, Bay Bridge's permitting likely would be a quick and easy process, according to Tim McFetridge, senior environmental engineer with DEQ.

That's because the company is proposing to do the hazardous materials cleaning and removal work inside the vessel, as it does in Virginia. Other companies haul away hazardous materials. A plan required for the state permit would spell out management practices the company would follow to keep toxins from escaping into the water.

That's it.

Once a plan a submitted, the turnaround for a stormwater permit is about a week, McFetridge said.

“There is no public process for our stormwater permit,” he said.

“Having said that I kind of cringe,” he added.

DEQ is open to hearing people's concerns and the files on such a permit would be open to anyone. At this point, he said, the agency considers such a business at low risk of contaminating an area such as Yaquina Bay.

McFetridge said DEQ hasn't dealt with this kind of operation in the past, because to his knowledge, there haven't been any in Oregon. As a result, there aren't specific state rules and intensive permitting requirements as would be required for operations such as pulp mills along waterways.

“What really drives it is whether there's a high degree complexity and potential for environmental impacts,” he said.

Taking responsibility

Opponents who have inundated the Port of Newport with comments contend there is a huge potential for disaster.

Longtime Newport resident Michael Kenney, who is helping organize the Friends of Yaquina Bay, contends these ships should be handled like nuclear waste.

He commented that he is amazed environmental officials allow these vessels to be dismantled in water, and that at least European countries do such work on dry docks.

“Their hulls are thin with age and rust. To drag them onto dry land is a hazard waiting to happen,” he said.

There needs to be a public dialog and public process for their dismantling, he said.

“This nation has a moral responsibility to dismantle this fleet, but we have to be very careful about where we do it and the environmental impact it will have on its surroundings,” he said.

Then-House member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., tried to unsuccessfully to pass legislation in the early 1990s to require the country scrap its obsolete ships only in the United States. That effort followed reports that scrapping of U.S. military vessels caused damage to coastal environments and harmed unprotected workers in India.

In U.S. House hearings on the topic of military ship scrapping in 1998, Bay Bridge's Dunavant testified that for the United States to expect companies here to perform the work, it would have to be profitable. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the United States scrapped hundreds of ships. Once news was released of the overseas problems and pollution in the United States caused by such operations, Congress slowed the program. From 1990 through 1998, only 30 ships were scrapped.

A couple hundred ships remain. They will continue floating in U.S. waterways, rusting and weathering storms until they sink or Congress comes up with a solution.