HMCS Huron - Preparations for Sinking
By SCOTT SUTHERLAND
Canadian Press
April 14, 2007
VICTORIA (CP) - The RCN spent more than $4 million to get a retired
destroyer HURON "clean as a whistle" before it can be sunk in a
West Coast naval exercise next month. Recent environmental
regulations are making disposal of old ships an expensive project
in ports across the country. But Lt.-Cdr. Garry Hansen, the officer in
charge of the 18-month cleanup of the 35-year-old destroyer
Huron, said it's money well spent. The Huron is scheduled for sinking
in May 2007.
Behind the decision to scour the vessel of potentially hazardous
materials was a change in the way the international community regards
hazardous waste disposal and the sale and treatment of retired
military equipment. Old navy ships fall into both categories. In the
late 1990s, Canada signed on to at least two international conventions
that have made it all but impossible to export used warships for
salvage without removing all military equipment, conducting a complete
cleanup and cutting the ship into such comparatively small pieces as to
make the entire exercise just too expensive.
Jeff Taylor, head of Environment Canada's industrial programs unit on
the West Coast, says as a result of one of those international
agreements, the so-called London Convention, in 2001, Environment
Canada issued revised cleanup standards for ocean disposal of
vessels. It is a 21-page list of everything required to be removed,
from oil and grease to hazardous materials such as mercury, lead,
copper, zinc and PCBs to debris, insulation - including asbestos - and
marine
paints and coatings. New guidelines were also put in place.
"Actually our cleanup standards have been copied all over the world,"
said Taylor. Hansen described them as "extremely rigorous."
"They're more rigorous than any other country in the world," he said,
based on his own experience and talking to colleagues in other navies
now faced with the prospect of having to dispose of their own warships.
Hansen said from the outset the navy committed to meeting and even
bettering what Environment Canada required. "It's true, we didn't even
try to cut any corners," he said, adding that as a native West Coaster
he is an avid outdoorsman and "pretty keyed in on the environment."
"I was pretty proud that the navy and the (Canadian Forces) in general
didn't try to influence this process at all. And the ship is clean. We
put a lot of effort into it and I'm pretty proud of that ." Beginning
in the summer of 2005, every piece of military hardware was removed
from the Huron. Much of it was returned to navy stores for
possible use in the three
remaining destroyers of Huron's class that are still in active service.
A massive effort followed to remove all the so-called high value
material for recycling. That included all the aluminum, brass, nickel,
and copper. "We removed well over 500,000 pounds (227,000 kilos) of
those recyclable materials," he said, adding that most of that went to
salvagers and scrap dealers. A team of navy engineers from Montreal
surveyed the ship for hazardous materials. Hansen said hundreds and
hundreds of samples of every piece of electrical equipment and
cable were taken with a particular eye toward polychlorinated
biphenyls, or PCBs. Just removing the kilometres of wiring from the
ship turned into a huge undertaking. "At one point we had about 120
contractors aboard for virtually a
month removing wiring, there's just tonnes and miles of it," Hansen
said.
The same went for oil and grease. Every space had to be cleaned to the
point where there is "no oil to the touch," which Hansen said was done
in every crevice and corner. "You can literally eat off the bilges," he
boasted, adding the extra
effort was needed to satisfy Environment Canada. "(Their)
inspectors are that meticulous. They crawl right down into
the bilges, under the engine platforms, into the fuel tanks."
Hansen said a senior salvage engineer from the U.S. Navy was
aboard and said it was the best cleanup he'd ever seen. The
United States has hundreds of mothballed warships, presenting an
extremely expensive problem for military authorities and the
government.
In total, Hansen said the disposal of the Huron is costing the navy
roughly about $7.5 million, of which about $4.4 million was in cleanup
to meet the new federal standard. Environment Canada certified the ship
was clean and issued a permit
March 31 under the Environmental Protection Act to allow the navy to
dispose of the ship at sea. "I think we got very good value for our
dollar and we can sleep at nights knowing that this former naval
asset is not going to have a harmful effect on the waters in Canada,"
Hansen said.
The navy plans to tow the Huron from Esquimalt harbour May 12, taking
about a day and a half to reach a military weapons range about
100 kilometres off the west coast of Vancouver Island. As part of an
international naval exercise dubbed Trident Fury, the hulk will be sent
two kilometres to the bottom of the Pacific using "Sea Sparrow
missiles, aircraft machine guns and naval gunnery" including torpedoes.
"She was a good ship right up to the end and some people look at this
as one last service to the navy," said Hansen. "But there will still be
a lot of people sad to see her sink."
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