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“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for scheduling yet another hearing on ship-scrapping, our national policy of being penny wise and pound foolish. The problem seems to get worse every day. The ships are probably right now spouting leaks as we meet and dither.”

That was May, 24, 2000.

Congressman Peter DeFazio uttered the biting comments as the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation gathered in a room in Washington, D.C. Lawmakers wanted to come up with a solution on how to get rid of obsolete military ships anchored in three fleets around the country. The Clinton Administration balked. And soon, there was to be some truth to DeFazio's prediction. Within four months, two ships in the James River, Va., fleet had sprung oil leaks.

In an interview this spring, DeFazio recalled a proposal by the Portland ship repair company Cascade General that came before the committee. The company had the facilities and a plan to bring Suisun Bay, Calif., ships to Oregon for recycling.

“But we could never get the administration to come up with the money to move the ships,” DeFazio recalled.

The pressure was on. It still is.

Short on money, plans

By now, people should know a little about the nation's mothballed military fleet. From 1987 through 1994, the U.S. Maritime Administration sold 130 obsolete military vessels for scrap, grossing about $600,000 per vessel. They went overseas, to Asian countries where they were hauled onto beaches and broken apart by untrained, unprotected workers.

In the early 1990s, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden was strident in his demands the nation stop exporting its obsolete ships to Third World countries.

Today, damaging practices continue, but not with publicly owned U.S. vessels since the Toxic Substances Control Act banned export of cancer-causing PCBs. The export ban sunk the U.S. ship dismantling program.

By 2000, U.S. Maritime Agency mothballed fleet had 112 vessels floating around the country waiting to be recycled, according to subcommittee testimony. It was a crisis in Congress' estimation.

DeFazio and his committee wanted to know: Why were there so few U.S. companies (only four qualified) in the ship recycling business? Why did U.S. law require the government to sell ships at a profit when there was imminent risk a ship might sink into one of the nation's waterways, taking a toxic load down with it?

Congress came up with a partial answer. In 2001, MARAD got $10 million to get rid of the worst ships in the James River fleet. It's allocated a limited amount since for ship dismantling.

Despite MARAD's efforts, in January 2005, the U.S. General Accounting Office issued a blistering report chastising the agency for having no defined plan on getting rid of the ships. The report blasted the agency's efforts to sell 10 of its worst-conditioned ships overseas, before figuring out a legal way to do it. “As a result, almost half of the $31 million that Congress appropriated in fiscal year 2003 has been tied up, ...” the report said.

However, with a 2006 deadline to eliminate all the ships, money is still an issue. Some U.S. companies have complained MARAD's bid system is unfair and won't pay enough to get the work done by required safety and environmental standards. MARAD has countered that the companies that have won its business aren't getting the work done within promised timelines.

That's left the country, as of April 30 of this year, with 141 ships in MARAD's non-retention fleets.

These days, Wyden still is watching the issue, according to his deputy state director Geoff Stuckart. The senator believes Congress has never appropriated enough money and Wyden remains concerned about ships “just melting away in our harbors.”

But his successful ship dismantling efforts essentially stopped 14 years ago, when he and lawmakers on his side prevailed in banning exports. The Democrat no longer sits on the Senate Commerce Committee.

“That was the last policy issued from our office,” Stuckart said.