Interesting article. Just one of these vessels can cost $5M to remove and destroy. One of them sank in the Columbia and it would cost Oregon $25M to remove it and clean up environmental damage, which Oregon doesn’t have the funds for. Yet the federal government is selling them for as low as $5,000, often without verifying means and insurance. Sounds like the federal government should be paying to do the removal directly, but of course then they couldn’t shift the cost to states.

Notable here is that the only shipbreaker companies in the country authorized to do business with the federal government are located in Brownsville, Texas, so in the event the ships are large enough to justify the cost and seaworthy enough to make the journey, this effectively becomes yet another tax Pacific Northwest citizens pay that goes to red states.

Abandoned and derelict vessels are quietly piling up in Washington and Oregon waterways, posing a threat to fragile marine ecosystems. At least 37 of these vessels in the Pacific Northwest, including the Pacific Producer, were formerly property of the Navy, Coast Guard or another federal agency, then bought by someone who later abandoned it. Together, these former government vessels have cost Washington state and Oregon over $21 million to remove and destroy.