This went out earlier without a Subject Line, but that has been corrected.

Much has been written recently about the challenge of safely scrapping 54 or more ships in the Suisun mothball fleet without discharging toxic paint into the San Francisco Bay system. The ships are continuing to drop toxics into Suisun Bay, and the problem must be resolved. Until now, the government's solution has been to tow them to Texas for scrapping but to try to clean the hulls before they leave, a process that ended in a fiasco last year when the hulls of two Victory Ships were "cleaned" while berthed at point Potrero in Richmond.

Following this email are a series of articles from the Contra Costa Times and other media that describe the problem.

The Federal government should find a few million dollars to rehabilitate one or more of the drydocks at Richmond former Shipyard #3. All that needs to be done is install a pair of doors, some pumps and utilities. Use the drydocks to safely scrap the mothball fleet ships and properly dispose of toxics while training and employing Richmond residents to do the work. This would solve the hull cleaning problem, avoid the cost of towing the ships to Texas, reduce inner-city unemployment, reduce crime, rehabilitate and preserve infrastructure at Rosie the Riveter WW II Home Front National Historical Park, and leave Richmond with a working drydock that could form the basis of a new local industry. I'll bet that at the end of the day, this would be cheaper than any other solution.

This conundrum offers a rare opportunity for a triple win for Richmond that is the perfect convergence of history and the future. Ever since Rosie the Riveter WW II Home Front National Historical Park was created, we have dreamed of restoring one of the original drydocks (also known as graving docks) at former Shipyard 3 and using it for its original purpose --- the ultimate hands-on interpretive exhibit. But where would we get the money?

I think there is enough money in the mothball fleet solution to fund the drydock restoration. How perfect could that be? Taking ships apart in the same drydock where some of them were constructed and providing jobs for people who are unemployed, partially as a result of the events of 60 years ago that brought thousands of African Americans to Richmond from the South and then left many of them as economically stranded victims of racism when they were no longer needed for the war effort (see “Lost Conversations”?

Even the Red Oak Victory is going to need hull painting soon that will require a drydock. It could go back to where it was built for this work.

The federal government is going to have to solve this problem and pay for it. We could keep all the money in Richmond. At this point, I think George Miller and the California Congressional delegation are the key. They can make it happen.

What can you do? Press reply to all, and send a message to Congressman Miller, Senators Feinstein and Boxer and Maritime Administration Director Sean Connaughton asking them to make Richmond, California, the location for safely scrapping the Suisun Mothball Fleet.

Article Launched:06/30/2007 03:06:12 AM PDT The head of the U.S. Maritime Administration said Friday that deteriorating vessels shedding toxic paint into Suisun Bay will be cleaned up, but he expressed frustration at what he called conflicting federal and state laws that caused the suspension of ship scraping earlier this year.

Standing aboard a decaying World War II troop carrier with weeds growing through its rotten wooden deck and paint peeling from its masts and superstructure in large strips, Sean Connaughton acknowledged his agency needs to do things differently.

"We will dramatically improve maintenance programs to protect the environment," Connaughton said. But he also pointed at the condition of the troop carrier, the Gen. Edwin D. Patrick, and added, "There is really very little you can do to maintain a ship like this."

He visited the "mothball" fleet Friday, two weeks after the Times reported that an environmental assessment earlier this year had estimated that 21 tons of toxic metals had fallen into the water from 40 ships and that another 65 tons remained aboard, posing an ecological risk.

Next week, the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board is expected to send the Maritime Administration a letter telling it to stop paint laden with toxic metals including zinc, lead, copper and barium from falling into the bay. Meanwhile, four California members of Congress want Connaughton to explain to them by July 9 what will be done to the fix the problems.

Connaughton said Friday that although the administration would work with the water board on pollution prevention, his top priority is to restart the stalled ship disposal program and get as many vessels out of Suisun Bay as possible. He is an attorney and former merchant seaman whom President Bush appointed to oversee the Maritime Administration last year.

Of the 74 ships in the Suisun fleet, 54 are slated to be destroyed. They include 15 of the 25 worst ships in the Maritime Administration's national inventory of obsolete vessels, Connaughton said.

The ships must be towed to Texas, because there are no scraping yards on the West Coast. Ship disposal was suspended earlier this year after California water regulators raised concerns that hull cleaning, required by the Coast Guard before the ships can be towed out of local waters, causes pollution.

Connaughton said the administration is caught in a bind: Hull cleaning complies with a U.S. Coast Guard order to stop the spread of invasive species that cling to ship bottoms, but it also causes water pollution that violates California clean-water standards.

"To comply with federal laws we may be compromising state law," he said.

A report the Times obtained from the Coast Guard last year found that large sheets of metal came off the bottom of two World War II ships that were cleaned in Richmond and left in the water.

That Times story piqued the state water board's interest. In December its chief executive, Bruce Wolfe, ordered the cleaning halted until a system was in place to capture both organic materials and metals.

The administration is awaiting test results on two ships that were cleaned in Virginia earlier this year. If those results show the cleaning was accomplished without pollution, then California will be asked to approve similar work here.

The Virginia method basically involves putting a plastic sheet around the ship to capture the material that is removed from the hull, said Michael Carter, the administration's chief environmental officer.

Connaughton said he remains unsure if the system being tested in Virginia will work well enough to meet California standards. "How clean is clean?" he said. "What is it that we need to do?"

But even with the restart of disposal, Connaughton said, it will take years to scrap the 54 ships in Suisun Bay. In the meantime, those being stored there will be maintained to better protect the environment, he said.

Another engineering study being prepared will make recommendations about how to better protect the bay from the chipping paint, he said. The environmental report earlier this year found that concentrations of seven metals in the paint exceed concentrations for hazardous waste.

Connaughton said he was less concerned with test results that showed high levels of toxic metals found in the peeling paint also were found in 24 sediment samples taken from the bay floor. Those results are consistent with bay sediment tests in other locations, suggesting the pollution could have come from other sources, he said.

The report also said that water extracted from six bay bottom samples near the fleet had very high levels of metals, and they were substantial enough to enter the food chain through marine bottom dwellers like worms and clams. The report called for further investigation of those findings.

Connaughton said he was unfamiliar with that portion of the report.

Moreover, Connaughton said he didn't know of the report before the Times published a story about it June 17. The study of the fleet's environmental impact was ordered in June 2006 by the administration's ship operations division in San Francisco after a Times story a month earlier questioned the condition of the vessels.

A San Francisco environmental group, Arc Ecology, obtained the report through the Freedom of Information Act and turned it over to the Times.

The group's executive director, Saul Bloom, said Friday that although Connaughton's visit Friday to the fleet was a welcome development, "We remain concerned that these conditions are thoroughly examined, and that (the Maritime Administration) makes a realistic request to Congress for what it will take to address them."

Thomas Peele in an investigative reporter. Reach him at 925-977-8463 or tpeele@cctimes.com.

SUISUN BAY

Rusting ships 'sitting time bombs'

Disposal plan to junk flaking fleet sails into environmental straits

Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The head of the U.S. Maritime Administration is coming to the Bay Area on Friday to inspect the "mothball fleet at Suisun Bay, which once was thought of as a valuable asset in case of war.

What Maritime Administrator Sean Connaughton will find is row on row of rusting ships, some of them in such bad condition that the old paint, much of it toxic, is peeling off in sheets and falling into the bay.

"Basically, they are sitting time bombs," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Connaughton also will find a bureaucratic mess, a kind of floating catch-22.

The Maritime Administration wants to scrap more than half of the mothball fleet on grounds that the ships are obsolete and have no further use.

But another arm of the government -- the Coast Guard -- won't let them be moved unless their hulls are cleaned to be sure that intrusive marine organisms are removed.

Meanwhile, political pressure is growing to eliminate the mothball fleet entirely.

"This fleet has no value at all," said Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez. "It is an economic sinkhole and a toxic mess. What is the maritime administrator coming to see? What's to look at? Move them."

Miller, whose district includes the old ships, was one of four legislators who wrote the Maritime Administration last week asking for an explanation of a report that toxic material was leaking into Suisun Bay, probably from peeling paint.

The letter also said the report, commissioned by the Maritime Administration, was evidence "of a growing environmental hazard to ... a fragile ecosystem."

The letter was signed by Miller, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and by Rep. Ellen Tauscher of Walnut Creek. All are Democrats.

The Suisun Bay fleet is one of three National Defense Reserve Fleets maintained by the Maritime Administration. The other two are on the James River in Virginia and at Beaumont, Texas.

The fleets were set up after World War II, when the U.S. Navy and the civilian Merchant Marine were at their peak. The ships were laid up, their engines covered in protective material and their cargo spaces sealed for years with the thought they could sail again.

At one time, there were more than 2,200 ships in the fleets. Some ships were broken out to sail again in the Korean War and a few for Vietnam.

Most of the recalled ships had to be reconditioned and updated. Only one, the Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien, steamed out of the mothball fleet under its own power. The O'Brien, based in San Francisco, is now a memorial ship and the oldest operating steamship on the Pacific Coast.

But the rest sat there, year after year, awaiting a call for service that never came. Now there are about 200 mothballed ships in the United States -- 73 of them anchored in rows at Suisun Bay.

Eleven of the ships -- including the 64-year-old battleship Iowa -- are Navy vessels that are not involved in the dispute over toxic material.

The other 62 are freighters, support ships or tankers. The Maritime Administration wants to dispose of 54 of these vessels. These old ships, some of them dating from World War II, were designated for disposal years ago. They are no longer maintained.

The most serious problem turns out to be flaking and peeling paint -- a process the Maritime Administration calls "exfoliation.

The paint typically contains lead, zinc, copper and other toxic materials, Wolfe said. "We definitely don't want this in the bay."

Environmental groups raised concerns over the peeling and flaking paint and to the amounts of PCBs and fuel oil aboard the ships. On its Web site, ARC Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group, calls them "ticking environmental time bombs."

The Maritime Administration commissioned a report on the peeling paint. The report, which purportedly found that 21 tons of toxic material had been found under the mothballed ships, was issued in February, but not released to the public.

ARC Ecology obtained it this month through the federal Freedom of Information Act, but the government then released a statement claiming that the contaminants discovered were "commonly found in the bay."

The Maritime Administration has a program to scrap the ships -- but the nearest scrapping facility is in Brownsville, Texas, which means the old ships have to be towed from Suisun Bay though the Panama Canal to Texas, a voyage of more than 5,000 miles.

Earlier this year, the Coast Guard halted the ship disposal plan after it was learned that the Maritime Administration was cleaning the ships in San Francisco Bay prior to towing them to sea.

Cleaning the ships in the bay without proper protection of maritime life violates the National Invasive Species Act, according to the water board's Wolfe.

Wolfe said his agency, the Coast Guard, which enforces the act, and the Maritime Administration have been discussing the problem to try to find a solution.

He said the Maritime Administration is developing a pilot program to safely clean the ships in its Virginia fleet prior to towing the vessels to a scrap yard.

However, developing such a program at Suisun Bay has not even begun. "They are on the hot spot," Wolfe said of the Maritime Administration.

There is also a time element. Wolfe said the problem is that some of the old ships are in such bad condition that it may be impossible to clean their hulls without compromising their watertight integrity.

"It is a dilemma," Wolfe said.

"The Coast Guard and the Maritime Administration is going to have to get off their ass and come up with a plan to move them," Rep. Miller said.

E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com.

TIMES WATCHDOGState insists ships stop hurting bay

"  Water board demands a long-term plan to curb environmental damage by Suisun Bay Reserve FleetBy Thomas Peele

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Contra Costa Times

Article Launched:06/29/2007 03:08:17 AM PDTCalifornia regulators will require the U.S. Maritime Administration to immediately stop polluting Suisun Bay with toxic metals from dozens of decaying ships and to come up with a long-term plan to curb environmental damage, the head of a regional water board said Thursday.

"We want containment measures on the falling paint," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board. "It is clear there are going to be ships out there for some time. We want them to address these concerns. It's got to be pushed."

The government has stored surplus ships in Suisun Bay since the end of World War II. Today, a "mothball fleet" of 73 vessels remains. A few are serviceable, but 54 rusting and rotting ships are slated to be cut up for scrap.

An environmental assessment of the fleet, which was completed early this year and reported in the Times on June 17, found that 21 tons of toxic metals -- including lead, zinc, copper and barium -- had fallen off the ships.

The report estimated that an additional 65 tons of paint remain on the ships and pose a danger to the environment. Seven toxic metals were found on the vessels in concentrations that exceed state standards for hazardous waste, and the same materials were found in sediment samples taken from the bay floor under the fleet.

"Our concern now is that what's going on above the water is as significant as below the waterline," Wolfe said. At a meeting Tuesday in Oakland, Wolfe said, the water board staff told administration officials that they want flaking paint removed from the ships immediately.

"In our minds, there are ways to do this," Wolfe said. One example is the Golden Gate Bridge, he said. "They've done maintenance and for years we've required them to use screens to keep paint out of the water. This can be done."

Maritime Administrator Sean Connaughton is expected to inspect the Suisun fleet this morning. An administration spokeswoman did not return a telephone call late Thursday seeking comment on Wolfe's remarks.

Connaughton's visit comes a week after California's two U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Reps. George Miller, D-Martinez, and Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, demanded explanations about why the environmental report was not immediately made public. They asked for a detailed cleanup plan to be submitted to them by July 9. The lawmakers' staffs toured the fleet Thursday morning.

Connaughton and other top administration officials have not publicly commented on the 610-page environmental assessment. Maritime Administration officials in Washington said they did not know of the document, which was submitted to the agency's San Francisco office Feb. 15, until the Times brought it to their attention June 12.

Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group, obtained the report under a Freedom of Information Act request and turned it over to the newspaper.

The water board's plan to require cleanup "sounds fine, but we want to make sure there is follow-through," Saul Bloom, Arc Ecology's executive director, said Thursday. "We don't want (the Maritime Administration) to get off the hook. We want them to do the job."

He said he welcomed Connaughton's visit to the fleet today, but he added, "this is a federal agency that is just now trying to get a handle on what could be 60 years of pollution out there."

Getting the ships to scrapping yards presents a dilemma for the Maritime Administration. There are no disposal operations on the West Coast, and it costs, on average, more than $1 million per ship to tow them through the Panama Canal to Texas.

Disposal of ships from the Suisun fleet was halted in February after the Coast Guard, concerned about the spread of invasive species, ordered the ships' hulls cleaned before they are moved.

But cleaning the hulls has also spread pollution into the bay. When two World War II Victory ships were cleaned in Richmond last year, large pieces of metal came off with the organic growth that had accumulated on the hulls for more than 30 years.

The state water board wants the administration to use a filtering device when cleaning the hulls to capture anything that comes off the ships. One such filter is being tested on vessels from a similar fleet in the James River in Virginia.

Wolfe reiterated Thursday that the ideal solution is for the ships to be destroyed. But to do that, the Maritime Administration must also meet state requirements that underwater hull cleaning of the ships not pollute local waters.

Even when the disposal program starts again, it will take years to clear the backlog of vessels, and some may be in too poor condition to survive the 45-day tow to Texas. But for decades, Wolfe said, the attitude of Maritime Administration officials has been to do nothing with the vessels as they await scrapping.

"We want them broadening (the operation) to include maintenance," Wolfe said. "I think they are fully aware of the significance of this."

Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter. Reach him at 925-977-8463 or tpeele@cctimes.com.

U.S. legislators seek mothball fleet answersBy Andrew McGall

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Contra Costa Times

Article Launched:06/22/2007 05:20:11 PM PDTWASHINGTON, D.C. -- Four federal legislators want the U.S. Maritime Administration to explain what it is doing to protect the Bay from toxic materials falling into Bay waters from the decaying Suisun Bay "mothball fleet."

In a letter sent Friday, U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer and Reps. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, and George Miller, D-Martinez, said they want to know what specific steps the Administration is taking to fix the problem.

They are specifically demanding the release of a report on the toxic materials in the paint and rusting hulls.

"We are concerned both that your agency has had this report in its possession since February 2007 and that the findings of the report contain evidence of a growing environmental hazard to the San Francisco Bay's fragile ecosystem," they write.

"The fact that the have been sitting on this report for month is infuriating," Tauscher said in a news release.

"Bay Area citizens have the right to know the environmental impact of the mothball fleet which is why we are putting pressure on the Bush administration to let us know what, if any, plans they have to protect our Bay," she said.

A series of Times investigative stories has revealed that the rusting ships have dropped thousands of pounds of toxic material into Bay waters, both at the Suisun Bay anchorage and at ports where the ships have been prepared for towing to salvage sites.

"We recognize that this is a complicated situation but inaction is not a solution," Miller said in the release.

The legislators also ask the Maritime Administration to give them a plan for disposal of the ships that meets state and federal environmental laws, and they ask the agency to consult with Bay Area agencies on the problem.

They ask for the maritime agency to respond by July 9.

Report: Mothball fleet drops tons of toxic metals into Suisun Bay

"  Old ships hemorrhaging pollutants into water, prompting a recommendation of immediate attentionBy Thomas Peele

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Contra Costa Times

Article Launched:06/17/2007 03:02:41 AM PD

TMore than 21 tons of lead, zinc, barium, copper and other toxic metals have fallen or washed away from decaying government ships in Suisun Bay, and high levels of the materials were found in sediment under the vessels, according to a draft report.

Tests on water extracted from sediment samples indicate a significant risk to aquatic life on the bay bottom and that toxic metals are likely entering the food chain and could be passed on to people who eat fish from the area, said two scientists who reviewed the report for the Times.

The 610-page document suggests that the "mothball fleet" of dozens of World War II relics and rotting cargo carriers is more of an environmental threat than the U.S. Maritime Administration, which maintains it, has previously acknowledged.

The report lists seven toxic metals in peeling and flaking paints in concentrations that exceed California's standards for hazardous waste.

In addition to the 21 tons of metals that are estimated to have fallen, at least an additional 65 tons remain on the ships.

That toxic material "is likely to be released to the environment" and its cleanup "is highly warranted and recommended" because of threats to the "ecosystem, site maintenance personnel, visitors and salvage crews," states the report by R&M Environmental and Infrastructure, an Oakland engineering firm.

The paint problem "is not going to stop on its own," said Michael McGowan, a scientist with Arc Ecology, a San Francisco environmental group that monitors government-caused pollution. "This material is going to keep getting into the bay, and something has to be done about it."

Dangerous water

The Maritime Administration commissioned the analysis after the Times reported in May 2006 on the deteriorating conditions of the ships.

The study was designed to estimate how much of the ships' paint had already flaked off and how much remains aboard that could drop into the water -- and to evaluate bay sediment under the fleet.

Forty ships were surveyed and 24 sediment samples were taken. Water taken from six of those samples was subjected to further testing.

The key findings:

"  The paint is highly toxic hazardous waste.

"  About 25 percent of the paint on the ships has flaked off.

"  Much of the remaining paint is badly peeling or "exfoliating" and is an environmental threat.

"  The same metals that were found in high concentrations in the paint chip samples were also present in high concentrations in the sediment samples, but they were not directly linked to the ships.

"  Water extracted from the sediment contained levels of toxic metals "significantly higher" than what is commonly found in contaminated sediment.

Water in the sediment is "much, much more dangerous than anyone would want it to be," said Raymond Lovett, a chemist in West Virginia who specializes in ship recycling.

The test performed on the sediment water indicates whether the level of metals in it are high enough for living things to ingest them. If the results show that the ratio of sulfides to water in a sample is higher than 1, then the metals are "bioavailable" to organisms.

The higher the ratio, the higher the amount of metal in the water. The ratios on the six tests ranged from 11 to 38. The report calls those results "significantly higher than values commonly observed for contaminated sediments."

That means that fish, clams and other creatures that inhabit the bottom are absorbing the materials. "Any organism that burrows in the mud will contact this water. The (tests) show that organisms in the water will take in" the toxic metals, Lovett said.

The report calls for further investigation of the high ratios. It does not define the water or sediment as toxic and states that the levels of metals are consistent with samples taken miles away, suggesting the ships may not be the source or the only source.

Industrial and municipal pollution, surface runoff and rain might also be responsible for the metals in the sediment, the report states. But that "does not exclude the potential for ecological risk to be present" from the paint, which is falling from many of the ships in large pieces.

The report does not directly link the toxic metals found in the sediment to the tons of paint, apparently because such an analysis was not ordered.

"They should have put the sediment under a microscope and looked for paint chip in it," Lovett said. Still, it was obvious that the ships significantly contributed to the metals found in the sediments, he said. "There is obviously no way around it. There's nothing else that could happen to the paint."

Lovett also said additional tests are needed on marine organisms from the bay bottom. "They have to get the worms and the clams and test them. This is not trivial."

'Bureaucratic incompetence'

The Maritime Administration received the document Feb. 15, but its chief environmental officer, Michael Carter, said last week that he had no knowledge of it or its origins and wouldn't discuss it.

The agency's chief spokeswoman, Shannon Russell, also said she had no knowledge of the report, but she suggested it illustrates why the ships should be recycled as soon as possible. "This is yet another reason to remove these vessels from the fleet," she said.

The Times obtained the report from Arc Ecology. It obtained a copy under a Freedom of Information request earlier this year.

Saul Bloom, the group's executive director, said it is outrageous that such a critical document had not been brought to the attention of Carter and other administration higher-ups in the four months since the contractor turned it in.

"It's bureaucratic incompetence. It's their damn report," Bloom said.

The head of the firm that performed the testing said the results were turned over to the Maritime Administration's San Francisco office in February. "I was under the impression that it went to Washington (D.C.)," said Masood Ghassemi of R&M Environmental Engineering and Infrastructure.

The test results will likely prompt California regulators to look more closely at the Suisun fleet.

"This is new information that we didn't have before. We are very interested in getting this document. It appears risk assessments should be done," said Shin-Roei Lee, a watershed division chief for the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

60-year history

The federal government began stockpiling surplus ships in Suisun Bay more than 60 years ago, at the end of World War II. The Maritime Administration is a civilian agency that is part of the Department of Transportation, although it stores war ships for the Navy alongside merchant vessels.

At its height, the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet contained hundreds of vessels. A 1959 photo shows 324 ships riding anchor, lashed together side by side in 14 rows.

This month fewer than 80 vessels remain there, according to Maritime Administration documents. About 55 of them are either classified as ready for disposal or being readied. The classification process includes a lengthy review of a ship's historic value and the stripping of useful parts from it. While the ships ride anchor in the bay, sometimes for decades, little or no maintenance is performed on them.

The Maritime Administration has missed congressional deadlines to dispose of all obsolete vessels, a result of a lack of funding and its own cumbersome processes. It pays companies to scrap the vessels, a cost to taxpayers that often exceeds $1 million per ship from Suisun Bay because there are no disposal operations on the West Coast so the vessels must be towed through the Panama Canal to Texas.

Last year the Coast Guard added a new hurdle to the process. It began requiring that the underwater portions of the ships' hulls be cleaned before they could be removed from local waters to stop the spread of non-native or invasive species.

When two World War II Victory ships were cleaned in Richmond last summer, large portions of metals came off the hulls and were left in the water, according to government documents. The water quality control board then began investigating the cleaning process as a cause of pollution.

In December, the board's executive officer required that the Maritime Administration comply with state anti-pollution laws when cleaning ships. Specifically, he mandated that the Maritime Administration capture any materials that come off the hulls during cleaning.

The Maritime Administration suspended its ship disposal program in February as it searched for a way to comply. In an April memo, its officials said they planned to make "a good-faith effort" to use such a system but did not guarantee it. The matter remains unresolved.

Meanwhile, only Naval vessels can be removed from the Suisun Bay fleet because

e they are exempt from the hull-cleaning requirements.

Many of the vessels in the bay are in poor condition, taking on water and listing. Water needs to be periodically pumped from some to keep them afloat. Most are severely rusted, and Maritime Administration documents show they are laden with tons of PCBs, asbestos, fuel oil and other toxic substances.

Lawsuit likely

Little or no testing to measure the fleet's environmental impact had occurred until the report issued in February.

Based on its results, Bloom said his organization is "very, very likely" to take the Maritime Administration to court soon to try to force further testing and remediation.

Bloom said the report raises questions about whether fish caught in the area are safe for human consumption and how far polluted paint chips might travel from the fleet.

"People catch fish out there on a weekly basis," Bloom said. "There might be people fishing out there who don't know this."

Eric Larson, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game, said his agency already urges people to limit their consumption of fish that reside in San Francisco and Suisun bays and the Delta, such as striped bass, sturgeon, croaker and halibut, because of pollution concerns like those outlined in the report.

Fish and Game recommends that adults limit themselves to two meals of resident fish per month and not eat striped bass longer than 35 inches. Women who are pregnant or might become pregnant and children younger than 6 should not eat more than one meal of fish per month and should not eat striped bass more than 27 inches long.

Migratory fish that pass through the bays and Delta, such as salmon, herring and anchovies, are less of a concern, Larson said.

The ship fleet, anchored off Benicia just east of the Carquinez Strait, is at a critical ecological juncture where fresh Delta river water flowing out crosses over bay salt water flowing in, McGowan of Arc Ecology said.

"There is the potential for metals to be moving both ways," he said. "This has a big effect on the ecology of the Delta. The fleet is not helping the Delta smelt and how much it is hurting them is open to serious questions."

Both California and the federal government classify the Delta smelt as a threatened species. Scientists are investigating the rapid decline in its population, including the contribution of man-made pollution.

The 24 sediment samples from the Maritime Administration study only took materials about 2 inches deep. Bloom and McGowan suggested that deeper bottom samples are needed, as are tests to determine how paint chips may spread through tidal currents.

"A 2-knot current moves a yard a second. In a minute a piece of paint can be 60 yards away," McGowan said.

It is unclear how much work would be required to remove the peeling paint. The report estimates that 17 percent of paint on the outside of hulls is gone, as is 58 percent of it on decks and 18 percent of it from interior walls.

A complete environmental assessment of the Suisun fleet and its impact on the bay is needed, Bloom said.

"If this is a start, fine," he said. "But let's see where it goes. There seems to be a regulatory void here."

Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter. Reach him at 925-977-8463 or tpeele@cctimes.com.

_In addition to peeling toxic paint, ships in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet contain hazardous materials deep inside them such as PCBs, asbestos and fuel oil.

Newly obtained Maritime Administration documents show how much was extracted from ships scrapped in recent years. The reports, prepared by Texas scrapping companies, describe hundreds of tons of those materials taken from the vessels as they were torn apart.

The reports show that:

The Point Loma, which was scraped last year, contained 139 tons of asbestos, 128 tons of PCBs and 285 tons of fuel oil and oily water.

The Nemasket, an old tanker also scraped last year, contained 287 tons of oil, 108 cubic yards of PCBs, 108 cubic yards of asbestos and 34 pounds of mercury.

The Tioga County, destroyed in 2005, contained 259 cubic yards of asbestos, 360 pounds of PCBs, 26 tons of oil, 238 tons of oily water and 100 pounds of mercury.

The Florence, destroyed last year, contained 150 tons of PCBs, 75 tons of asbestos, 3,631 tons of oily water and 306 tons of petroleum.

The Wahkiakum County, destroyed in 2005-06, contained 195 cubic yards of asbestos, 240 cubic yards of PCBs, 253 tons of oil, 200 tons of oily water and 276 pounds of mercury.

_A federally commissioned report indicates that paint chipping off ships in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet contains concentrations of toxic metals that exceed California's standards for hazardous waste. The toxic metals are:

Barium: A soft silvery metal that is sometimes used in rat poison and is heavily used in the petroleum industry. It affects the nervous system and heart, and causes tremors, weakness and paralysis.

Cadmium: A highly toxic metal found in paints. Cadmium is a carcinogen, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health classifies it as a workplace hazard because of its frequent industrial uses.

Chromium: A steel-gray hard metal that is used on dyes and pigments and in making steel. It can cause nose bleeds, and ulcers and holes in the nasal septum. Studies have shown that increased exposure raises the likelihood of lung cancer.

Copper: A reddish-brown corrosion-resistant metal, it is used as an electrical and thermal conductor and can be found in paints. Copper can cause vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and nausea.

Lead: A highly toxic silvery gray metal with widespread industrial uses. It is considered omnipresent in the environment and is essentially indestructible. It was used in paints for most of the 20th century, creating a major public health threat. Exposure can cause nerve and reproductive disorders, cognitive and behavioral disorders, hypertension and anemia.

Mercury: A heavy silver metal that is one of five elements that is liquid at room temperature. It is used in thermometers and other scientific instruments. It is a major pollutant that is classified as a workplace hazard because of its frequent industrial use. It is stored in the muscle tissues of fish and easily works its way up the food chain.

Zinc: A bluish-white metal that is brittle at ordinary temperatures and malleable when heated. It is used in alloys and galvanizing iron. Health effects from overexposure can include eye, throat, nose and skin irritation, and lung damage.

Sources: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Reporters Environmental Handbook

State could require permits for Suisun Bay ship cleaning

"  Federal agency also may be required to monitor for pollutionBy Thomas Peele

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Contra Costa Times

Article Launched:11/27/2006 05:08:53 PM PST

California water quality regulators are close to ordering the U.S. Maritime Administration to obtain state permits and monitor for pollution when it cleans the hulls of obsolete ships from the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, government documents show.

"It appears that such work requires appropriate permitting from the water board," Keith Lichten, a senior engineer with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, wrote in an October e-mail to federal officials.

"We believe such permitting is consistent with the U.S. Coast Guard's requirement that the (ship cleaning) comply with local requirements" and the federal anti-pollution laws that the board enforces, Lichten wrote.

State regulators became involved after reading Times reports in August that hull cleaning was occurring in Richmond without notice to state and local authorities and a later report that government documents show the work left metals and lead paint in the Bay.

Now, new documents show that Maritime Administration officials ignored state requests to observe the cleaning last month of another ship in Alameda.

No final regional water board decision has been made on whether to regulate the hull cleanings. Formal action would require a 30-day comment period preceding a public hearing and a vote of the board's members. The board is one of eight such bodies that regulate water quality and usage in California.

Four World War II Victory ships have been cleaned this year in Richmond and Alameda prior to being towed to Texas scrapping yards. The work was done under a Coast Guard order issued in June that marine growth be removed from the hulls below the water line to lessen the chance of spreading non-native species to other waters.

Complicating matters, the ships are old, and many have been mothballed in Suisun Bay for decades, allowing their hulls to be overwhelmed by barnacles, seaweed and decaying metal. Active ships undergo cleaning, usually in dry dock during routine repairs, roughly every five years.

The large amount of growth and the Suisun ships' aging hulls combine to make them difficult to clean without discharging metals into the Bay.

Nonabrasive scrubbers are supposed to be used to reduce the potential of scraping metals into the water. But, Lichten wrote, "the brushes were sort of plastic or rubber-coated steel, and when the rubber wore off, the steel turned into a sort of Brillo-pad kind of thing."

When a Victory ship was cleaned in Richmond in August, sheets of decayed metals, paint and hull coatings more than a third of an inch thick peeled off the hull and were left in the water, according to a report prepared by the contractor that performed the work. The Times obtained the report from the Coast Guard under a Freedom of Information Act request.

"There is no precedent for a ship-cleaning permit. There is no past here," said Will Bruhns, a regional water board spokesman.

If the board does require a permit, it is likely it would be for the administration's overall ship-cleaning program in order to create a consistent and uniform process of monitoring for pollution, Bruhns said.

"We don't anticipate seeking a permit for each ship," he said. What could be required "is an overall plan for the mothball fleet and how to deal with this for all the ships."

The Maritime Administration plans to remove as many as 50 decrepit ships from Suisun Bay in the next few years as it struggles with an already-expired congressional deadline to dispose of obsolete vessels.

Under the current Coast Guard order, each of those ships would have to be cleaned, a process unlikely to involve dry docking because the vessels are so old they could be damaged in the process.

Instead, divers now clean the ships with scrubbers. It is that process, known as "scamping," that concerns environmentalists and board officials because hull material can come off with marine growth and stay in the water.

Maritime Administration officials insist that the process doesn't harm the environment. Agency spokeswoman Shannon Russell said earlier this week that it plans to "continue to work closely with the (water) board."

But state records made available under the state Public Records Act show the Maritime Administration was largely uncooperative when another ship was cleaned last month at a federal dock in Alameda near the USS Hornet.

Water board engineers wanted to observe the work to help them determine whether to require permits for further cleanings, but the administration proceeded without them.

"It was disappointing not be able to review a sampling plan in advance of the work, or at the site and to discover that, apparently, some of the basic sampling we had requested was not completed," Lichten wrote to administration officials.

The water board was not notified "of the location or final schedule of the ship work so that we were not able to inspect the ship until after the cleaning at the water surface had been completed," Lichten wrote.

"There have been some issues" involving cooperation, Bruhns said last week. "We hope to work cooperatively in the future."

At a meeting in Oakland last month, administration officials argued that there are no toxins on the hulls that can be left in the water and that the heavy marine growth on the hulls is evidence of that.

"Their argument is that (toxic anti-fouling agents such as copper aren't) there any more because there is all the growth," Bruhns said.

The state board wants more data, such as samples taken from mud under the ships before and after the cleaning, he said.

The Maritime Administration has announced plans to next remove two more ships from the Suisun fleet and send them to Texas for scrapping.

The Queens Victory, records show, has been anchored in Suisan since 1971 and is expected to be heavily fouled. The Jason, a 1943 Navy repair ship, has been in Suisun since 1997. Records show it is badly decayed.

Reach Thomas Peele at 925-977-8463 or tpeele@cctimes.com

Choppy waters for mothball fleetBy Thomas Peele/Contra Costa Times

TheReporter.ComArticle Launched:06/30/2007 08:28:09 AM PDT

The head of the U.S. Maritime Administration said Friday that deteriorating vessels that are shedding toxic-laden paint into Suisun Bay will be cleaned up, but he expressed frustration at what he called conflicting federal and state laws that caused the suspension of ship scraping earlier this year.

Standing aboard a decaying World War II troop carrier with weeds growing through a rotted wooden deck and paint peeling from the ship in large strips, Sean Connaughton of the maritime administration acknowledged his agency needs to do things differently.

"We will dramatically improve maintenance programs to protect the environment," Connoughton said. But he also pointed at the condition of the troop carrier on which he stood, the Gen. Edwin D. Patrick, and added, "There is really very little you can do to maintain a ship like this."

He visited the "mothball" fleet Friday two weeks after the Contra Costa Times reported that an environmental assessment earlier this year had estimated that 21 tons of toxic metals had fallen into the water from 40 ships and that another 65 tons remained aboard, posing an ecological risk.

Next week, the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board is expected to send the Maritime Administration a letter telling it to stop paint laden with toxic metals including zinc, lead, copper and barium from falling into the bay. Meanwhile, four California members of Congress want Connoughton to explain to them by July 9 what will be done to the fix the problems.

Connaughton said Friday that while the administration would work with the water board on pollution prevention, his top priority is to restart the currently stalled ship-disposal program and remove as many vessels from Suisun Bay as possible. He is an attorney and former merchant seaman whom President Bush appointed to oversee the Maritime Administration last year.

The mothball fleet is just east of the Benicia Bridge near the Solano side of Suisun Bay. Of the 74 ships moored there, 54 are scheduled to be destroyed. They include 15 of the 25 most deteriorated ships in the Maritime Administration's national inventory of obsolete vessels, Connaughton said.

The ships must be towed to Texas because there are no scraping yards on the West Coast.

Ship disposal was suspended earlier this year after California water regulators raised concerns that the hull cleaning the Coast Guard requires before the ships can be towed out of local waters causes pollution.

Connaughton said the administration is caught in a bind: Hull cleaning complies with a U.S. Coast Guard order to stop the spread of invasive species that cling to ship bottoms, but it also causes water pollution that violates California clean-water standards.

"To comply with federal laws, we may be compromising state law," he said.

A report obtained from the Coast Guard last year found that large sheets of metals came off the bottom of two World War II ships that were cleaned in Richmond and left in the water.

That story prompted the state water board's interest. In December its chief executive, Bruce Wolfe, ordered the ship cleaning halted until a system was in place to capture both organic materials and metals.

The administration is awaiting test results on two ships that were cleaned in Virginia earlier this year. If those results show the cleaning was accomplished without pollution, then California will be asked to approve similar work here.

The Virginia method basically involves putting a plastic sheet around the ship to capture the material that is removed from the hull, said Michael Carter, the administration's chief environmental officer.

Connaughton said he remains unsure whether the system being tested in Virginia will work well enough to meet California standards. "How clean is clean?" he said. "What is it that we need to do?"

But even with the restart of disposal, Connaughton said, it will take years to scrap the 54 ships in Suisun Bay.

Another engineering study being prepared will make recommendations about how to better protect the bay from the peeling paint, he said.

Connaughton said he was less concerned with test results that showed high levels of toxic metals found in the peeling paint were also found in 24 sediment samples taken from the bay floor. Those results are consistent with bay sediment tests in other locations, suggesting the pollution could have come from other sources, he said.

The report also said that water extracted from six bay bottom samples near the fleet had very high levels of metals and that they were substantial enough to enter the food chain through marine bottom dwellers like worms and clams. The report called for further investigation of those findings. Connaughton said he was unfamiliar with that portion of the report.

The study of the fleet's environmental impact was ordered in June 2006 by the maritime administration's ship operations division in San Francisco after a story a month earlier questioned the condition of the vessels.

A San Francisco environmental group, Arc Ecology, obtained the report through the Freedom of Information Act.

The group's executive director, Saul Bloom, said Friday that while Connaughton's visit Friday to the fleet was a welcome development.