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End of aircraft carriers being turned into artifical reefs?
After several years during which turning old warships into artificial reefs was fashionable, four decommissioned aircraft carriers will instead be dismantled, and recycled, at shipyards.
Navy photo of USS Forrestal in 1962
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An environmental group, the Basel Action Network, said it makes sense creating shipyard jobs in the U.S., instead of a potential toxic mess at sea.
"The Obama administration's new plan to recycle these four aircraft carriers appears to be a signal that the administration may be correcting long-standing misguided policies that not only squander resources, but American jobs as well," stated Colby Self of the Basel Action Network, a group that monitors global toxic issues and that last December issued a report critical of the artificial reefs.
The four decommissioned carriers are:
USS Constellation
USS Forrestal
USS Independence
USS Saratoga
The Navy would not comment but Navy records show that bids are being accepted to dismantle the veteran ships.
Self said the Forrestal alone has some 40,000 tons of recyclable steel, copper and aluminum.
Excerpt from Wikipedia
Forrestal was decommissioned 11 September 1993 in Philadelphia, and was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register the same day. After being stricken, ex-Forrestal was heavily stripped to support the rest of the carrier fleet. In 1999, the USS Forrestal Museum Inc. began a campaign to obtain the ship from the Navy via donation, for use as a museum, to be located in Baltimore, but this plan was not successful.
The Navy removed the ship from donation hold in 2004 and redesignated it for disposal. According to the NVR, her final status is "donated for use as fishing reef."
As of 2007, the ship was being environmentally prepared for sinking as an artificial reef as was USS Oriskany. Due to elements of the Forrestal design having led directly to current aircraft carrier design, the ship will be donated to a state and sunk to become a deep water reef, for fishery propagation and so that it will be accessible to divers. The date for the sinking has not yet been announced.
On 15 June 2010, Forrestal departed Naval Station Newport in Newport, Rhode Island, where she had been stored since 1998, under tow for the inactive ship storage facility in Philadelphia. Forrestal is now tied up at Pier 4 in Philadelphia, next to USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67).
It is expected Forrestal will remain there until the Navy decides her final disposition, which will either to be sold as scrap, sunk as a target, or scuttled as an artificial reef.
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