Campaigners Protest As US Navy's Toxic Fleet Heads Across The Atlantic
by Frances Williams, Geneva, Financial Times
23 October 2003 – Environmental groups renewed their attack yesterday on a controversial US decision to send part of the US navy's ageing toxic "ghost fleet" to the UK for scrapping. European governments and the European Commission also voiced objections to the plan.
A report issued in Geneva by Friends of the Earth UK and the Seattle-based Basle Action Network (Ban), which campaigns to strengthen the Basle international convention on hazardous wastes, said the trans-oceanic shipments were illegal as well as dangerous.
Four ships are already being towed across the Atlantic to Hartlepool in north-east England, with the first two scheduled to arrive on November 5. Environmentalists describe the dilapidated vessels, which contain hundreds of tonnes of toxic materials including asbestos and PCBs as well as old fuel oil, as "floating timebombs".
The remaining nine ships included in the contract have been blocked from export by a court in Washington, pending a hearing next April of a lawsuit brought by Ban and two other US environmental groups. They argue the US action is illegal under a law prohibiting export of PCBs.
Friends of the Earth UK is considering a separate legal challenge based on a British law banning the import of asbestos. Campaigners say European and global rules restricting transport of hazardous wastes have also been ignored.
Margot Wallström, the European Union's environment commissioner, told the European parliament on Monday that the ships should be dismantled in the US, where facilities existed. "I simply do not believe that it makes sense to tow these contaminated ships across the Atlantic," she said. The commission is due to give a legal opinion this year.
Belgium has protested to the British government that it had not been asked for its consent for the ships to cross its territorial waters, as international law requires.
Environmentalists say the US plan, if allowed to proceed, would set a damaging precedent, permitting wholesale export of the naval "ghost fleet" for dismantling in low-wage yards in Asia, where workers lack adequate safety protection. Jim Puckett of Ban said yesterday that the US maritime administration had indicated its intention to send the bulk of the fleet abroad, the prime candidate being China.
The US and Japan were alone in resisting moves under discussion this week in Geneva to strengthen rules governing ship-breaking under the Basel Convention, Mr Puckett said.
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