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By Scott Harper, The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA, USA,7 April 2002 -- CHESAPEAKE -- The asbestos is going to a landfill near Richmond, the lead paint to a Pennsylvania waste site, the toxic PCBs to South Dakota.

Disposing of the environmental hazards from the Spiegel Grove, a former Navy ship being converted to an artificial reef for the Florida Keys, will cost about two-thirds of the overall salvage project, according to managers at Bay Bridge Enterprises in Chesapeake.

The high expense and a seven-year paper chase over potential liabilities, ownership and regulations illustrate in explicit detail why so few surplus vessels are being recycled these days.

Government hurdles and unclear environmental rules are scaring away people from saving old hulks for fishing and diving reefs, restaurants and museums, industry experts say. So the ships remain in storage, their hulls corroding and occasionally leaking pollutants.

The state of Florida and Monroe County are footing much of the bill for turning the 56-year-old Spiegel Grove into an underwater tourist attraction. Divers also are helping by purchasing special medallions.

Background coverage: Special report: Time Bombs on the James The project was supposed to be finished in 1997. But that was before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started asking questions, before Florida and federal attorneys began arguing, before transportation and contractor problems surfaced.

Current plans call for the 510-foot landing ship dock to be cleansed, inspected and sunk off Key Largo later this spring. The final tab: an estimated $1.4 million.

On a recent morning at Bay Bridge Enterprises, on the Elizabeth River, crews wearing respirators and protective suits were scraping lead paint, hustling to meet an April completion deadline.

``You basically have to remove anything loose -- paint chips, floor tiles, you name it,'' said Tim Mullane, operations manager at the Chesapeake yard.

The workers, mostly young Hispanic men making about $10 an hour, were using industrial vacuums to suck up the lead chips. The paint chips will be packaged later for out-of-state disposal.

Nearby, on rutted shoreline, dumpsters are stuffed with metal ducts, pipes, engine parts, gauges and dials. Each will be checked for toxic and radioactive levels before appropriate disposal, said Rich Lodgek, the yard's environmental health and safety officer.

Chemical samples must be taken along the 400,000 feet of cables and wiring within the ship. In one instance, a single sample showed excessive levels of PCBs, but all 85 sections of wire tested had to be removed and treated as hazardous waste, Mullane said.

``You don't know how clean you have to get it,'' Mullane said, ``so you end up ripping it all out.''

The problem, he and others say, is that the EPA has not set a national standard for PCBs in the ocean. This despite years of delay that, in turn, has driven up salvage costs and made it harder to create reefs.

The answer, according to Mullane, who is eager to convert more ships to reefs: ``Set some rules, help us with some money, and let us go to work.''

Reach Scott Harper at 446-2340 or sharper@pilotonline.com