AT THE SITE OF THE NEW CARISSA — It can’t be done.

That was the argument attorneys for the state of Oregon had to counter in the trial over the grounding of the New Carissa. They argued it could be removed. And they won.

Six years later, Oregon’s legal team of Bill Wheatley, who was the special assistant attorney general on the case, and assistant attorneys Becky Kamitsuka and Nathan Steele, were out of the courtroom and standing on the salvage barges astride the New Carissa on Coos Bay’s North Spit.

“It's just like what we thought it would look like,” Kamitsuka said. “It’s come full circle.”

The weather conditions were, as Titan Managing Director David Parrot put it, “one of those days that doesn’t happen” in summer on the Oregon Coast. The sea was flat that recent day and by afternoon, the sun burned through the clouds. The barges were quiet as the crew was at lunch. Cranes sat idle, but Titan’s handiwork — sliced-off pieces of the New Carissa — dotted the decks as proof of progress.

The barge set up was familiar to the lawyers, but there was one surprise — the monstrously big removal site.

“I had no idea how big these barges were,” Kamitsuka said.

But it seems logical considering the magnitude of the precedent-setting case.

The New Carissa went aground during a storm in February 1999. In 2001, the state filed suit against the New Carissa’s owners for leaving what the Department State Lands considered the company’s 1,200 tons of rusting trash on Oregon’s shoreline. The jury could have awarded the state as much as $334 million in damages if the wreck had been found a permanent trespass, Kamitsuka said. Instead, the verdict directed Green Atlas to pay State Lands $25 million for temporary negligent trespass. That meant the ship’s stern had to go. An appeal settlement later reduced the award by $5 million. That money is paying to remove the wreck.

The attorneys said the case also was a challenge. Kamitsuka said the team typically took depositions all over the state. But the Carissa case sent one attorney on a quick trip to the Netherlands.

Steele said the state needed a deposition from one of the New Carissa’s former crew members but he was available for only part of a day in the Netherlands. Steele rushed there to take it.

“Bill turned to me and said, ‘Nathan, do you have your passport?’” Steele recalled.

Steele hopped on a plane. He did his research on the way.

Lawyers for the ship’s owner proclaimed it was impossible remove the wreck safely.

The state’s attorneys stood in Judge Barron’s Coos County courtroom in 2002, contending salvors could safely remove the rusting hulk. It was trash, they argued — trash the ship’s owners left on Oregon’s public beach.

As part of the state’s case, Titan’s Parrot testified that his company’s jack-up barges could cut it up. Titan could remove it.

Ten of the 12 Coos County jurors believed Parrot and the state’s arguments. They decided the grounding amounted to a trespass on the Oregon’s land.

“The jury believed it could be removed,” Steele said. “This is an affirmation for the people who voted for it.”

Steele said the jury decision is a testament to the state of Oregon’s concern for its public lands.

“When you look down there —would you want that in your back yard?” Steele asked looking at the wreck from high above on the deck of the Karlissa B.

Wheatley said then-Gov. John Kitzhaber was insistent that the wreck be yanked out of the surf.

“There was a lot of evidence that it couldn’t be done,” Wheatley said.

Kitzhaber’s dedication was part of the reason the state won the suit. Most of what the jury would have seen from the shore in the fall of 2002, when they were taken to look at the shipwreck, has been removed.

Kamitsuka said she was amazed as she stared down from the jack-up barge to see how much Titan Salvage has cut away.

“It’s incredible,” she said. “It’s almost gone.”

In the courtroom, Parrot presented the scenario for removing the New Carissa. The model he introduced to Wheatley, Kamitsuka and Steele in court came alive for the three attorneys as they boarded Titan’s barges. And the admiration among the members of that courtroom was mutual.

“If you hadn’t done what you did, we wouldn’t be here,” Parrot told them.