'Ghost fleet' passes France
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An unidentified old U.S. Navy vessel is towed in the English Channel on its way to Hartlepool, Britain.
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LILLE, France (AP) -- The first of 13 aging U.S. Navy vessels destined for a controversial demolition in Britain passed through the English Channel off France on Monday, maritime officials said.
The two World War II-era oil tankers Canisteo and Caloosahatchee will likely have to wait in storage amid a dispute with environmentalists, who say the ships are tainted by toxic PCBs and asbestos.
A British court last week ruled that plans to scrap all 13 ships from the "Ghost Fleet" of retired U.S. Navy vessels will have to wait until legal challenges by environmentalists are heard next month.
By the time that ruling was issued, four vessels had already left the United States. Britain said they should turn around until the legal issues are resolved, but the United States says returning is impractical, at least for the first two.
The Canisteo and the Caloosahatchee are expected to arrive at the River Tees in Hartlepool, England, by late Tuesday or early Wednesday, officials in the Normandy town of Cherbourg said Monday. Two other ships crossing the Atlantic are expected to reach England in early December.
Some of the "ghost fleet" vessels had been anchored for decades in the James River in Virginia.
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The environmental group Friends of the Earth says the first two ships each contain 34.1 tons of non-liquid PCBs -- polychlorinated biphenyls, which were used as electrical insulators, but are suspected of causing cancer -- and 61 tons of asbestos.
The two others, the Compass Island and the Canopus, contain even more of the contaminants, the group says.
"This is not about an anti-American position, but concerns an international ecological problem," said Paulo-Serge Lopes, a Green Party official from France's coastal Pas-de-Calais region.
The vessels are among nearly 100 ships, many more than 50 years old, anchored in Fort Eustis, Va., as part of the U.S. Navy's Reserve Fleet. The fleet has been an environmental concern in Virginia for years, and nearly 70 ships are considered obsolete and ready to be scrapped.
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