US Ship Scrapping Decision Nears
by Lloyd's Register
23 April 2003 – US environmentalists say Washington is likely to select China to break an eight-year moratorium on scrapping US ships abroad.
The Clinton administration suspended the export of ships for demolition on health and environmental grounds, but the US Congress has provided $31M to resurrect the programme to scrap 133 ships by 2006. Officials from the US Maritime Administration (MarAd) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cut short a visit to Chinese yards last month because of the SARS epidemic, but a MarAd official says “we plan to return”.
Jim Puckett, a spokesman for the watchdog group Basel Action Network, says MarAd representatives are “pretty confident” the EPA will grant a waiver of the Toxic Substances Control Act which bans the export of PCBs. The waiver would remove MarAd’s only legal impediment to exporting US ships for scrapping, given that Washington has not ratified the Basel Convention signed by shipping nations to ensure toxin-free ship exports.
Puckett says China appears to be MarAd’s preferred option, but MarAd's spokesman said it would be “premature to comment” before evaluating Chinese, UK and Mexican shipbreaking yards.
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