Friends of the Earth (FoE) is expected to ask the High Court in London Wednesday to issue an order that would effectively prevent the ships from docking in England, a step that, if approved, would almost certainly result in their returning to their home base on the James River in Virginia.

Britain's Environment Agency (EA) announced last week that permits issued to the British firm Able UK to import and dismantle the four ships--plus nine others that have not yet set out from Virginia--were invalid, and it appears that the Agency will not contest the FoE's action before the Court.

Environmental groups on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and the Basel Action Network, have been protesting the scheme to sail the ships, which are laden with thousands of tons of toxic materials, including PCBs, asbestos, and contaminated fuel oils, across the ocean for dismantling, particularly when ship recyclers in the U.S. could do the job.

Indeed, several U.S. recyclers have asked Congress why their bids to dismantle the ships were rejected or ignored, and the Congress' watchdog, the General Accounting Office (GAO) has agreed to investigate.

"We have the technology right here in Virginia to recycle the ships in the Ghost Fleet safely," said Michael Town, director of the Sierra Club's Virginia chapter. "This is another example of the Bush administration trying to make an end run around the public."

Former President Bill Clinton outlawed the sale of mothballed ships for scrap overseas both because of the environmental hazards they posed to ocean waters and because of growing public concern that toxic wastes were being shipped to developing countries where workers were inadequately protected from exposure to poisonous chemicals.

But the Bush administration won a waiver from its Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to send the ships overseas.

The 13 ships are part of the "Ghost Fleet" under the jurisdiction of the United States Maritime Administration (MARAD). Two of the four ships that are currently en route are due to enter British waters Friday, if they are not ordered home before then.

Britain's EA originally granted Able UK a modification to its waste-management license to carry out the work in September, but then last week declared it "invalid" after FoE started legal proceedings. Merely declaring it "invalid," however, will not necessarily stop the ships from docking in Britain, and it is for this reason that the group is now going to court to have the modification formally revoked or quashed.

A major problem with the scheme surfaced when it turned out that a promised 24-acre dry-dock facility where the work was to be performed does not in fact exist, something that environmental groups have been warning about for weeks.

The groups went to court to get an injunction blocking the export of the ships in late September. They argued, among other things, that the scheme violated a provision in the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act that barred the export of PCBs in the absence of a waiver granted only through a rulemaking procedure that included public input.

The U.S. judge in the case issued a temporary restraining order blocking nine of the 13 ships, but allowing the four now underway to sail.

The groups said they are concerned that these ships represent just the "tip of a toxic iceberg" of more than 150 toxic and mothballed ships that are rusting in U.S. waters and that the Bush administration plans to send the rest to developing countries, such as India and China which have lower environmental and worker-protection standards.

"Why is the Bush administration ignoring U.S. environmental laws when domestic shipbreakers could handle these toxic ships safely and economically?" asked Martin Wagner, an Earthjustice attorney. He said the circumvention of the PCB export ban could set a particularly dangerous precedent.

While the four ships now at sea should be returned to the U.S., the groups maintain, they should only do so under conditions that are as safe as possible, including an escort by an emergency response vessel through the entire voyage. If favorable weather conditions are unlikely between now and the spring, the vessels should be wintered at a U.S. military port in Europe, they said.

In addition, once they arrive in U.S. waters, they should be towed immediately to a U.S. recycling facility.