Shipbreaking or ship recycling.

Are they the same or does one represent public relations verbiage?

The first term refers to the business of taking obsolete ships to port facilities to tear them apart. Hazardous materials are removed and carted away for disposal to meet federal environmental standards. The metals and other items with value are sold.

The second and newer term - ship recycling - refers to the exact same thing. The obvious emphasis is on the product rather than the process. Some people question whether the terminology is a sneaky ploy. Others say that's precisely where the discussion needs to go locally, nationally and around the world.

“It's a good idea to recycle worn out ships,” says Mike Graybill.

It might surprise some people to hear the director of the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve embracing the discussion about dealing with the hazardous waste laden military ships. But, he is.

Graybill didn't start the discussion in Oregon. Virginia-based Bay Bridge Enterprises did.

Late in 2005, the shipbreaking company announced it wanted to build a facility at Newport. The fast-paced negotiations with the Port of Newport prompted a community uproar ultimately sinking the proposal. Ironically, Bay Bridge already had looked at Coos Bay, not finding an appropriate site. It has looked here again since Newport, but Gov. Ted Kulongoski dampened Bay Bridge's enthusiasm. He declared that no such companies that break or recycle ships are welcome in Oregon unless they do it all in dry docks. That wasn't in Bay Bridge's plans.

Now, Denny Vaughan has stepped in.

The Coos Bay native sailed off into a career with the U.S. Navy decades ago. Years later the retired rear admiral wants to get into the business of “recycling” his former employer's mothballed ships and other vessels.

He is proposing a facility with specially-built graving docks to isolate potential pollutants. He wants it built in Coos Bay. And Vaughan is adamant that recycling is the focus.

He finds it ironic that a society that chastises employees for not recycling office paper recoils at the thought of recycling ships.

“It saves raw materials and it reuses metals and makes it into another form. To me it's almost sinful to not reuse these ships,” he said.

One of these military ships can carry a couple hundred tons of hazard wastes, but overall they weigh 7,500 metric tons. Much of that's metal. And right now the scrap metal market is sizzling.

“What is it that doesn't offend us tremendously to allow those ships to sit there for 40 years?” Vaughan asked. “They sit there with every rusty, lead filled paint chip dropping into the bay and we don't take a stand on it.”

As many as 60 of those ships float at Suisin Bay near San Francisco. Now, they are being towed off one by one down to Central America, through the Panama Canal up to Texas. But it's not happening fast enough. Every year there are hundreds more obsolete private and military vessels in the United States and worldwide.

There isn't a lot of detailed public information about the conditions of the Suisin Bay ships and two other fleets in Texas and Virginia, although federal officials have suggested the situation is getting dire. There's fear the rusting hulks might sink with their nasty cargo if nothing's done about them.

“If we're going to recycle ships anywhere on this earth, we're going to have to do it somewhere where there's rules to prevent the mess,” Graybill said. “I would suggest it be done in a place to protect workers, worker safety and protect environment.”

Graybill isn't necessarily advocating it be done at Coos Bay, but he is calling for in-depth discussion and evaluation of whether it could be done here or at any Oregon port. To him, the environment shouldn't be the deal killer, but the catalyst for talk.

Locally, agencies have adopted an open-minded approach. There hasn't been organized opposition to shipbreaking here, as there was in Newport. The big difference is that while Vaughan is investigating Coos Bay and Bay Bridge was sniffing around again as late at the end of February, no negotiations are under way with local public agencies.

All the while, Port officials, South Slough and the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology have started sponsoring monthly question-and-answer forums. They want to educate themselves and the public about the mothballed ships and the industry dismantling them.

“Do people recycle their tin cans? What happens when you have a tin can that has tons of risks in it?” Graybill asked. “How do we find a threshold somewhere where we're comfortable with those risks?”

This state in past decades has been a leader showing people how to recycle, he said. Remember the Bottle Bill? In Graybill's opinion, there's no reason Oregon can't lead again.