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| A cutter for International Shipbreakers torches steel cut from a ship at the Brownsville, Texas, yard in preparation for the arrival of a ship from the James River Reserve Fleet that will be scrapped at the yard. Chris Tyree Photos/The Virginian-Pilot. |
| Slide show: Dismantling The Ghost Fleet |
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Behind barbed-wire fences and squintingly small entrance signs, the shipbreaking yards sit almost anonymously on the banks of the Brownsville Ship Channel , three miles from the Mexico border.
Workers park their beat-up cars nearby in rutted lots. They cross paths every day with asbestos, lead, PCBs and other toxics lurking in the old ships they dismantle, earning about $7 an hour .
Yet there is never a shortage of applicants.
On this hard, flat landscape, amid palm trees and Hispanic rap music, the capital of the U.S. shipbreaking industry is re-emerging – and Virginia is a big reason why.
Last year, 11 junk ships from the James River Reserve Fleet, nicknamed the Ghost Fleet, were towed from Hampton Roads to their graves in Brownsville. It was one of largest exoduses of these environmentally risky relics from the historic James in years. Their scrapping will take months to complete.
The big vessels arrived at the tip of Texas under federal contracts worth $9.1 million to the four yards operating here – ESCO Marine , Marine Metals , All Star Metals and International Shipbreaking Ltd. The contracts also mean hundreds of skilled-labor jobs that, while paying an average less than $17,000 a year and no health benefits, are coveted in this sultry, struggling region known as the Rio Grande Valley.
No other ports outside of Brownsville – not yards in Virginia or Baltimore or Alabama – have received more ship-disposal contracts in the past four years from the U.S. Maritime Administration, the government caretaker of the Ghost Fleet and two smaller collections of mothballed ships, in Texas and California.
During that time, 31 ships have left the Ghost Fleet for dismantling; 23 headed south for the border, according to government figures.
For now, it appears the trend will continue, at least as long as federal money remains available, and if south Texas officials have their way.
Their sales pitch goes something like this: Yes, this is a dirty business, but it’s work that must be done. So bring it on.
“We’re off the beaten path, we’re strictly industrial, and there’s really no homes anywhere nearby,” said Donna E. Eymard , interim director of the Port of Brownsville, which leases land to the yards. “We’re about creating jobs, and these are good jobs for our region.”
While the federal contracts have come in bunches recently, they also have come in awkward spurts. So much so that yard executives say they have had to lay off employees while waiting for paperwork to clear in Washington and for more ships to arrive from Virginia.
They criticize the Maritime Administration for moving too slowly, or not at all, at a time when Congress has instructed the agency to dispose of more than 100 obsolete ships nationwide by September 2006 .
The Ghost Fleet, moored off Fort Eustis in Newport News, is home to most of these stee l dinosaurs, about 60 unwanted ships. They also are the oldest, some dating to World War II, and are the ones most likely to leak waste oil or even sink.
“It’s unbelievable that we’re trying to get rid of these things as a country, and I’m talking about laying off workers because we can’t get ships here,” said Richard Jaross , president of ESCO Marine.
Jaross and others said the 2006 deadline could have been met had the government been more aggressive or responsive to private overtures.
“We were writing them letters begging them to use us,” Jaross added. “Their management – or, really, mismanagement – was very frustrating to us as an industry. We couldn’t ever figure out what was going on.”
A report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office found similar faults with the Maritime Administration and its shipbreaking protocol. The report, released this month, said the agency had no integrated strategy for complying with the 2006 deadline and “relied almost entirely on an inappropriate procurement method.”
Critics pounced.
U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz , a Texas Democrat whose district includes Brownsville, said the report reiterated what he long has argued – that the Maritime Administration “has repeatedly refused to recognize the capability of our domestic shipbreaking industry,” instead focusing on foreign options.
Ortiz called for the GAO audit in 2003, after the Maritime Administration announced a $17.8 million , 13-ship disposal contract with a British recycling yard, Able UK , which never had dismantled a vessel.
No ships have yet been scrapped at Able UK, delayed by environmental lawsuits and controversy on both sides of the Atlantic.
In response to the criticism, the Maritime Administration has been quietly defensive.
In terse public statements, the agency said it simply “has been moving as quickly as possible to award contracts for the safe disposal of obsolete vessels” based on limited funds.
Congress has allocated about $15 million a year since 2000 for ship disposal, not nearly enough to move quickly. But instead of complaining or fighting for more, the agency has kept a stiff upper lip, at least in public, accepting whatever amount the Bush administration and Congress negotiated.
While Virginia politicians have said they simply want the worst of the Ghost Fleet dismantled as soon as possible, no matter where, Ortiz and others have urged the government to direct more contracts to American yards, including those in Brownsville.
Not surprisingly, Ortiz campaign stickers and political posters can be seen on cars and fences at the four Brownsville yards. “At least he’s in there fighting for us,” said Jaross, an Ortiz bumper sticker adorning his office wall.
The story of Brownsville’s shipbreaking yards in many ways is that of the entire industry, and illustrates the dilemma the U.S. government faces in deciding how to responsibly remove its unneeded military and civilian fleets.
Brownsville was a shipbreaking hub in the late 1960s and ’70s , mostly for the same reasons it is today: an ample, cheap, nonunion labor pool in a right-to-work state; local support in a pro-industry climate; tropical weather that allows for an uninterrupted work schedule; easy access to foreign and domestic steel and recycling markets.
Both then and now, the yards occupy almost the same spaces – on moonscape lots along the Brownsville Ship Channel. The channel itself is man-made, dug in 1936 . It stretches 17 miles in a straight line from Brownsville to scenic South Padre Island and the greenish waters of the Laguna Madre and the Gulf of Mexico.
The waterway is only about 400 feet wide , but is 42 feet deep . There is just one lane into the port, rolling past undisturbed wetlands, vast sand flats, highway, warehouses and industrial sites.
Only the names of the yards have changed over the years, due to bankruptcies and closings. The downturn began in the late ’70s, when the government began sending most of its junk ships overseas to Taiwan, India, China and elsewhere.
There, the dismantling was even cheaper, with few regulations governing worker safety, pay or environmental protection. Many Texas yards closed or scrimped by on smaller contracts to break oil rigs and private barges. Much of the labor force shifted vocations, or simply moved away.
The pendulum swung back in the mid-1990s , when the Clinton administration barred the exporting of ships to countries with lax safety and environmental laws. It was an attempt to end the dumping of American ship wastes on the undeveloped world.
But without places to go, aging vessels piled up in locales such as the James River. The Ghost Fleet’s thinning hulls continued to rust and weaken, threatening to spew waste oil and other toxic innards into host waterways.
Of the American yards still in business then, few if any wanted the ships, due to their high costs, heavy regulation and little reward. So the government started paying subsidies, more than $1 million a ship at first, now slightly lower.
In September , for example, All Star Metals won a contract to dismantle three Ghost Fleet ships – the Protector , the Gen. Nelson M. Walker and the Donner – for $2.4 million .
The company also keeps all profits from its sales of scrap steel, copper and other metals found in wiring and onboard equipment. Steel prices especially have skyrocketed in recent years, mostly due to demands in China.
During a tour in February of All Star Metals, 27-year-old president Nikhil H. Shah eyeballed a chunk of machinery being pulled from a ship and, in seconds, quoted its worth .
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Red, Texas dirt clings to lines holding the rusting Donner into its berthing at All Star Metals in Brownsville, Texas, in preparation for its dismantling. Commissioned in 1945, the Donner's claim to fame was its rescue of Ham the chimpanzee that flew into space January 31, 1961 before the first manned mission. |
Shah, whose family has long been in the metals-trading business, radioed a crane operator and asked the weight of the huge engine piece dangling in mid-air.
“OK, well, that’s worth about $8,000 right there,” Shah said. “But now, we’re not going to clear that much. I mean, look around at all the equipment and people and space that we have to pay for. We’re not getting rich here.”
While American yards require government subsidies to make ends meet, foreign ports often will pay the U.S. government for junk ships.
“It’s a totally different dynamic,” Shah said, speaking of how yards operate in India, where his family originates. “I get paid to do it here; they pay to do it there.”
Shah and other Brownsville executives fear that Washington, under financial pressures, again will adopt an export-first policy. They cite recent trips by Bush aides to China’s shipyards and the British contract. They view that contract in part as a trial balloon for how best to seek exemptions to overseas environmental restrictions.
“We must have an attitude of cradle-to-grave in this country,” said Jaross, who worries that a recent $1 million expansion of ESCO Marine might be wasted with a policy reversal. “They’re our government’s ships; we’re creating the mess, and we should clean it up.”
While Shah is the youngest of the Brownsville lot, Jaross is the oldest – and certainly carries the most baggage.
Jaross opened a salvage yard in Brownsville in 1971 . The chief executive of Marine Metals today, Nellie Perez , used to work for him as a clerk. Others started in the business through Jaross as well. Jaross said he has dismantled between 400 and 500 ships , including more than 100 Navy vessels. He has lasted decades in the business despite run-ins with state and federal regulators. In person, he is intense, outspoken and defensive of his image, blaming “local politics” and a modern American distaste for dirty waterfront industry for many of his legal problems.
Regulators shut down his Sigma Recycling , a shipbreaking business in Wilmington, N.C., following a raid in 1996 . Investigators discovered multiple environmental violations, including the improper handling of asbestos and waste oil.
Several ships waiting for disposal, including Navy and Maritime Administration vessels, were confiscated.
“There was oil all over the ground, loose asbestos, too,” said Rick Shiver , who supervised site inspections for the North Carolina Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources.
It took until 2003 to clean up the site, nearly seven years . Eventually, business connections to Jaross paid about $1 million to remove tons of contaminated soil and purge other contaminants.
Jaross was criminally investigated, but never fined or prosecuted in the case. The U.S. Justice Department declined to take him to court, a spokeswoman said without elaborating. When he returned to Brownsville several years ago, Jaross was worried his past would ruin his future. “I thought they might never let me get back in,” he said.
Asked about Jaross, the Maritime Administration said that as a matter of course, it checks to see if companies have been “debarred, suspended or are otherwise ineligible for a government contract.” With ESCO Marine, the agency said in a statement, the company “does not appear on that list … to date.”
Veterans such as Jaross say the rules have changed greatly since the beginning of their careers. Waste oil used to be sprayed on the ground, for example, to contain the Texas dust; now, that action would be an environmental crime.
“I’ve seen this area grow from no compliance, mostly because there was no enforcement, to what it is today,” said C.J. Mire , an environmental safety and health manager at ESCO Marine who has been in the business since 1982 .
Still, the yards have problems. Since 2000 , the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, has documented more than 25 violations at ESCO Marine and 13 violations at International Shipbreaking, according to records. Marine Metals and All Star Metals have “no inspection activity,” according to OSHA.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has issued notices of violation to ESCO in 2002 for storm-water problems and one to International Shipbreaking for spilled oil on its grounds, records show. The yards were not fined and now are in compliance, said Lorinda Gardner , a state enforcement chief.
Perhaps the biggest advantage Brownsville holds is its vast, inexpensive labor pool, which includes a large contingent from Mexico.
Shipyard workers in Mexico can expect to earn about $50 a week, according to industry estimates. But just 35 miles away, at the Port of Brownsville, they can make $280 a week at a minimum, as well as receive training and opportunities for bonuses and overtime.
Yard executives say their workers must have proper immigration papers and green cards. But as many as half live across the border and commute under various labor programs. And despite the anxieties stirred by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, nearly everyone in Brownsville describes the U.S.-Mexico border as “porous.”
Without mentioning names or numbers, several workers said they know illegal documents can be purchased on both sides of the border, and that some colleagues probably have gone that route.
At full capacity, the yards supply about 800 jobs to the regional economy, according to port estimates. Few laborers speak English. If Hispanics are to rise to supervisory positions, however, bilingual skills are almost a must, officials say.
Francisco “Pancho” Cazares is one such supervisor. A U.S. citizen, Cazares lives in Matamoros, Mexico, and drives his Ford truck to International Shipbreaking five or six days a week. “Hopefully not on Saturdays, but sometimes, yes,” he said.
His father was a shipbreaker, too, and Pancho joined the industry at 17 . Now 34 , Cazares earns $40,000 a year overseeing more than 120 laborers.
He concedes that his neighbors whisper about him “maybe being related to the drug money” because he can afford a second car and because he travels so often. Matamoros, like many border towns, is plagued by drug cartels and violence.
As is the practice, Cazares has helped several friends and family get shipbreaking jobs, including his father, who still cuts steel with a flame torch.
It costs 30 cents to walk across a bridge into the United States. Below, the Rio Grande is unremarkably narrow, with trash and junk tires strewn about on its banks.
Cazares drives across, often transporting several neighbors and family members to work in Brownsville, leaving his flat-roofed home in a modest Matamoros neighborhood at about 6 a.m.
While they do not receive health benefits at work, Mexican commuters pay minimal fees to participate in Mexico’s national health-care program. With a wife and three children, Cazares said, his annual health fees are about $100 .
While driving home one recent evening, a newly cashed paycheck in his wallet, Cazares said he has “lost count” of the workers who have been hurt or killed on the job. He once fell 50 feet off a ladder. Another time a swinging piece of steel accidentally tore into his knee, causing a 2-inch-deep hole that landed him in the hospital.
“But I’ve been lucky, no fractures,” he said. “My wife worries, though. She calls about three times a day” on his cell phone.
According to OSHA statistics, shipbreaking is about two times as dangerous as construction work and is among the most likely jobs to sustain an injury.
Lead poisoning also is a risk, since old vessels are loaded with lead paint. Yards today, though, bar workers from smoking or eating on the job, to limit lead ingestion through their mouths.
Cazares has mixed feelings about his family someday coming to America. His children have never visited the United States and speak little English. Luis , the oldest, plays soccer and wants to go into law enforcement. Carlos is a computer whiz and excels in school. Eduardo , the youngest, is quick to smile and likes to play outdoors with his friends.
“They’ve never seen snow,” Cazares said. “I think they just want to experience what they’ve heard about for so long. You know, Six Flags, Houston, shopping malls. All that.”
After crossing the border station above the Rio Grande , a remarkably simple process, especially for one who is recognized as a regular commuter, Cazares sighs comfortably.
He is home.
He smiles at the sights of busy Matamoros streets, of smoke-spewing buses full of chattering students, of open-air shops selling tacos, candy, beer and pistachio nuts.
“In America, no one walks on the streets. There’s no sense of togetherness. I like that about Mexico,” Cazares said. “Here, I have my dad and his friends. They come over and, you know, we hang out. Have a barbeque, whatever. Just be together.”
Once home, his two dogs appear on the flat roof, barking happily. He opens the iron gates that surround his home and strolls tiredly into the living room. His children are waiting quietly and nervously to meet the American guests.
They listen intently as their father answers questions in fast, unbroken English. “They never hear me speak like this,” Cazares said with a chuckle. “I think they’re amazed by me.”
His wife, Ana , rolls fresh taquitos and grills them on the stove. She puts toasted chips, picante sauce and refried beans on the kitchen table. Jack Daniel’s whiskey and a bottle of Mescal appear. The youngsters drink fruit soda and Coke.
Asked if he wants his children to follow in his footsteps, Cazares shakes his head no.
“It beats you up,” he said. “Hard work, you know.”
After dinner, he insists on guiding his guests back to Brownsville; Matamoros is under a travel advisory due to a spike in drug violence.
He crosses the border, again, before saying goodbye.
“OK, you’re safe now,” Cazares says. “I need to get home, get some sleep. Got another early day tomorrow, you know.”
Reach Scott Harper at 446-2340 or scott.harper@pilotonline.com.
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The view from a partly dismantled ship at ESCO Marine looking up the Port of Brownsville, Texas, toward the Gulf of Mexico, past two other ''Ghost Fleet'' ships awaiting their disposal. |