29 September 2003 (London - Reuters) – An environmental group said on Monday British authorities had warned U.S. officials a "ghost fleet" of old and polluted ships would be sent back to America if it sailed for an English scrapyard without approval.

Friends of the Earth said Britain's Environment Agency had delivered the warning about the controversial scheme to dispose of the ships in an email to the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD), a copy of which was given to Reuters.

Last week, the British Department of Transport's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) gave the green light for the 13 former U.S. Navy supply ships to cross the Atlantic on condition repairs recommended by surveyors were carried out.

But the Environment Agency told MARAD in the email obtained by Friends of the Earth that it had not yet approved a new waste management license placed by the British firm that wants to import and dismantle the ships.

It told MARAD "the potential consequences" of allowing any of the U.S. "ghost fleet" to sail to Britain "before all required regulatory approvals are in place...may lead to the ships being repatriated to the United States."

Officials at the Environment Agency were not immediately available for comment.

The multi-million dollar plan envisages the fleet being towed 4,500 miles across the Atlantic from anchorage points in the United States, through the English Channel and up to a demolition site in Graythorp, Teesside, in northeast England.

The dilapidated supply ships, part of the so-called U.S. fleet, are polluted with carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) -- banned in the 1970s -- asbestos, and varying quantities of heavy marine diesel oil.

Environmental groups and politicians in Britain and Europe have attacked the venture as posing an unacceptable risk to public safety and the environment, a charge strongly denied by the British demolition firm involved, Able UK.

The MCA has also said France, Belgium and Ireland had to give permission for the fleet's passage.

U.S. environmental groups, the Basel Action Network and the Sierra Club, have started legal proceedings against MARAD in a bid to halt the scheme.

The rusting ships have been languishing at their anchorage points on the James River in Virginia for years as U.S. authorities argued over how best to dispose of them.