Local salvage yard takes on Ghost Fleet

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Virginia
THE VIRGINIA-PILOT
Local salvage yard takes on Ghost Fleet
By Scott Harper
March 21, 2004

CHESAPEAKE -- They are squeezed into a narrow channel of the Elizabeth
River like cattle in a pen, bound together so tightly that workers can
step from one ship to the next without even noticing.

Five rusted old vessels from the infamous Ghost Fleet, known formally as
the James River Reserve Fleet, are being gutted of their toxic innards
here. By summer, they will have been reduced to thousands of chunks of
steel, each the size of a doorstop.

What will remain of these antique giants ? cargo ships, retired Navy
warriors, gray support vessels, all more than 500 feet long ? will be
sold as scrap, their 50-year-old fuels recycled or burned, their massive
hulls gone but for the memories of former sailors.

Mike Dunavant is the general manager of Bay Bridge Enterprises , the
Chesapeake salvage yard dismantling the ships under a $2.7 million
government contract.

Dunavant is a former history teacher who fell into shipbreaking by
chance, though he now walks along the dirt-lined docks and talks into
his dusty two-way radio like an old pro.

"Yeah, well, we're out here near the drag-up slip with a couple
reporters," he said into the black radio that had just rung with yet
another message from his secretary. "Tell 'em I'll have to get with 'em
later."

Bay Bridge Enterprises is the only Virginia yard that won a contract
last year from the U.S. Maritime Administration to break Ghost Fleet
ships with money approved on Capitol Hill. Congress has set a deadline
of 2006 to dispose of more than 70 obsolete vessels parked in storage in
the middle of the James River, off Fort Eustis in Newport News.

Bay Bridge, along with its New Jersey-based environmental specialist,
Clean Venture , has bid to dismantle up to seven more ships this coming
fiscal year.

Congress recently appropriated $16 million to keep the cleanup effort
going.

French and German TV news crews have visited the Chesapeake yard since
its initial award last fall. They wanted to know the same thing: Are
Dunavant and other American shipbreakers mad at their British
competitors for "taking" their work?

This article can be viewed at:
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=67812&ran=5662

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