There's no official proposal, and a former area resident's concept of building a ship recycling facility on the Coos Bay North Spit may be sailing into the sunset.

&#8220We're in a situation where, depending on what type of parcel he's looking for, it might be tough for us to provide him a site,” said Martin Callery, spokesman for the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay.

&#8220He,” is Dennis Vaughan, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, who is partnering with investors to build a facility to take apart and recycle obsolete U.S. military vessels. There's a fleet of them floating at Suisun Bay near San Francisco. They are under the management of the U.S. Maritime Administration, with a deadline of last month to have had the ships scrapped. About 60 ships remain.

Vaughan first floated the idea last winter. He talked of building a graving dock facility at Coos Bay. Ships would be towed into the self-contained dock and disassembled. The concept would isolate a vessel to prevent the release of pollutants into the bay. The port held a town hall meeting on the topic, with promises to hold more, but months later, the issue appears stagnant.

The port owns a vacant 70-acre site on the North Spit near the Southport Forest Products sawmill. The port has since acquired a two-year option to purchase 1,300 acres of Weyerhaeuser's land nearby for industrial development, with negotiations to site a liquefied natural gas facility on about 150 of the acres. But late last month, port Executive Director Jeff Bishop suggested the agency isn't marketing any more Weyerhaeuser land due to negotiations with other companies.

&#8220I personally was hoping that maybe Coos Bay or the port would be a little more proactive. I just never got a real strong calling,” Vaughan said in an interview last month.

Following the action

A ship recycling endeavor in Coos Bay would face strict environmental regulations and high labor costs. And while Vaughan still has his eyes on Coos Bay, his company is avidly negotiating to build a facility in Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico.

&#8220You go where the action is,” he said.

It's no sure deal, either. That endeavor is facing a strong current of U.S. law that forbids export of the ships due to toxins. Still, Mexican officials apparently have met with U.S. officials in an effort to work an export solution.

In recent months, the issue of toxins, along with critters clinging to the ships' hulls, have stirred rough waters for MARAD officials, as they've struggled to get rid of the ships.

There is limited money from Congress to pay companies to scrap the vessels. And perhaps worse for MARAD, since debate surfaced over one company's failed attempt to build a ship-scrapping yard at Newport, officials have ordered the agency to prevent organisms clinging to the ships' hulls from hitchhiking to other ports.

Coast Guard gets tough

The U.S. Coast Guard has enforced regulations banning transport of invasive species in ballast water, and regulations exist banning those species' movement on hulls, too, according to an agency fact sheet. This June, the agency stepped up pressure on MARAD to stop the spread of hull species.

&#8220Normally, ships are in use and they're not picking up barnacles,” said U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman Angela McArdle.

The lucky critters that might be quick enough to settle on active ships are ripped off when the vessels are under way at sea. MARAD's ships, however, don't move. They've been moored for years, even decades, in mothballed fleets around the country and their hulls are encrusted. The agencies have agreed to experiment to come up with hull-cleaning standards that will work.

&#8220They are required by law to make sure these invasive species don't move. They also are required by law to move these vessels. It's a balance we need to strike,” McArdle said.

Earlier this summer, MARAD officials required Brownsville, Texas-based All Star Metals Inc. to clean the hull on the Barnard Victory prior to towing it to Texas. A boom was set up around the ship and underwater divers cleaned the hull, appendages, struts, propeller and rudder, according to MARAD spokeswoman Shannon Russell in an August e-mail.

The &#8220scamping” involved removing grass and soft marine growth. Most of the work was done with an 80-density polypro (non-metal) brush material. It was mounted on a three-brush, multi-head cleaner. Divers cleaned the propeller with hand scrapers, she said. The goal was to prevent paints and metals on the ship's hull from peeling away, too.

It cost $175,000, which included moving the vessel down the bay.

Then last month, a San Francisco-area newspaper, the Contra Costa Times, reported hull paint and metals did drop into the bay. A report by Underwater Resources Inc. said that large flakes - up to several feet in size - of metal and paint peeled away during the work, news reports said. Debris was reported to have dropped to the bay floor.

That didn't stop the work.

Open to options

San Francisco Bay Water Quality Board Senior Engineer Keith Lichten said his agency has been supportive of the efforts. Despite the three-page report's findings, despite communication breakdowns and despite public concerns, the state agreed to let MARAD continue hull-cleaning experiments. MARAD's spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment on the most recent efforts. Hull cleaning was completed last weekend on the World War II-era Occidental Victory in the waters at a former naval air station. The state required no permit for the in-water work, but Lichten said California asked MARAD to monitor the project.

&#8220It's also not clear to us that they completed all the monitoring that we would have liked,” Lichten said.

The Water Quality Board also had hoped to have its own staff observe the work, but was notified late into the operation and missed part of the effort.

The ship was to sail this week under a 45-day tow to a Texas ship-scrapping yard. Lichten hopes to have the results of the hull sampling report on his desk in the next couple weeks, so the state of California can make some decisions. Lichten didn't speculate what those decisions might be.

There is only one permitted dry dock in all of the San Francisco Bay area. It's commercially run and busy, Lichten said. And, even if cleaning the hulls in a dry dock became a viable option, officials doubt the really rotten-hulled vessels would come out of a dock in good enough condition to be towed all the way to Texas or even to much-closer Coos Bay. And so, California officials have let the hull-cleaning experimentation carry on.

&#8220We can all see that they have about between 70 and 80 ships sitting in the mothball fleet …,” he said. &#8220Sooner or later they're going to sink to the bottom of the bay there.”