Recyclers have been towing away the U.S. government's troubles one by one. But it's hardly made a ripple in the derelict ship problem plaguing the U.S. Navy and U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD).

In 2001, Congress demanded MARAD dispose of all obsolete vessels in the National Defense Reserve Fleet and Navy's possession. There still were almost 180 such vessels around the first of this year.

The agencies have five months left to make them disappear. But the six sanctioned U.S. ship recyclers can't get rid of them fast enough.

These vessels are rotting away. Once anchored in the inactive fleets, the vessels no longer are maintained. No Navy shipyard crews scrape away the microscopic organisms chewing into the steel hulls - hulls now coated with thick reefs of plants and marine animals. No crews sand down and repaint the metal, and rust is cracking and crinkling the ships' topsides.

And as each winter rolls into a new hurricane season, the fears remain that all it will take is a roiling storm to sink one or more of the vessels, releasing a cloud of toxins.

Pollution record

There can be thousands of gallons of residual fuels and oils aboard many of these vessels, along with heavily regulated asbestos, PCBs and other contaminants.

That's what fueled Congress' debates and heated pollution fears.

That's why - blame the PCB export ban in particular - those ships haven't gone overseas to the ship recyclers drooling to tow them away.

MARAD officials contend there have been few problems with the mothballed ships.

There was an oil spill at a reserve fleet site from the Donner into Virginia's James River in August 2000, according to Shannon Russell, MARAD's director of congressional and public affairs. The ship was scrapped.

A month later, according to news reports in the Virginian Pilot newspaper, another vessel anchored in the same fleet, the SS Builder, took on water and spewed residual fuel into the river. It cost $700,000 to clean it up. MARAD ultimately removed hundreds of thousands of gallons of residual fuel from the vessel, according to the story.

Accidents have been uncommon, the agency says of its reserve ships anchored at Suisun Bay, Calif.; Beaumont, Texas; and in the James River. In 1989, there was a mishap involving MARAD's ship, the Hope Victory, at Suisun Bay. During a Navy training exercise involving explosives, the ship's hull was ruptured and caused a small oil spill. There haven't been any spills since, Russell said.

When it comes to towing away vessels for recycling, Russell said, no MARAD ships have sunk in transit.

It's a technical distinction. At least one obsolete U.S. military ship sank in recent years. It was one from the Navy's inactive fleet, not one that had been transferred to MARAD.

Towing troubles

“These ships have easily gone down. ... There are documented and cited towing losses,” said Jim Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network.

The ex-USS Stoddert, which served as a guided-missile carrier, sank after being rammed during a tandem tow in January 2001. The former Navy vessel, along with the ex-USS Cochrane, was being towed from Hawaii to a shipbreaking yard in Brownsville, Texas. In another incident, the USS Wayne Victory's “hull cracked” open 12 miles off Miami Beach on its way to a Texas shipbreaker. It carried 57,000 gallons of residual oil, according to BAN's testimony in MARAD documents. With $100,000 in emergency repairs, it apparently made it to Texas.

Marad made no mention of either mishap in its 2002 report to Congress, but it did list the Wayne Victory as having been removed from the inactive fleet.

As far as environmental groups and others are concerned, the less the ships sail the better.

“It's a very risky business in all phases,” Puckett said of ship recycling.

BAN opposes the export of ships unless the hazardous materials are removed. Puckett's Seattle-based group has dogged MARAD for years. One lawsuit is winding through federal court now, in the group's effort to prevent MARAD from exporting up to 13 mothballed ships to England for dismantling.

“We've won every step of the way,” Russell said.

It's in the British government's hands now to OK a deal, she added.

But that still wouldn't sidestep U.S. law banning export of PCBs.

There's also talk now in the industry of stripping the hazardous materials out of the ships here. Then, the vessels could be towed to Mexico or other countries, where low-cost laborers would cut them apart.

“The more options there is, the better it is for the taxpayers,” Russell said.