Newport – Abandoned and Derelict Vessels Plague Oregon Ports

by Brian Bahouth

In 2022, the Port of Newport disposed of 14 abandoned vessels for a cost of roughly $86,000. Today, the port has 16 more.

Aaron Bretz is deputy director and director of operations for the Port of Newport. Bretz said derelict vessels weigh heavily on the port’s operating budget, which he said is widely misunderstood.

“First question that we’ll get is, what are you doing with our tax dollars, and what are you doing with our moorage fees? And the answer is, as far as the the property tax dollars that come in as unrestricted to the port, which is money that we could use for general operating, the tax money that we receive from the property taxes in the port district is about 1% of our overall operating budget. 

“So, it doesn’t go very far in terms of funding our operations. The rest of it we have to fund either by way of fees or getting grants from other entities to be able to do projects and things like that. Grants are usually for projects and not for operating, and what we’re talking about here with abandoned, derelict vessels is an operating expense usually.” 

Bretz said that the port has been able to most efficiently remove and dispose of abandoned vessels when they find grants to remove them in batches, as they did in 2022.

“By-and-large, it’s a situation where you get somebody who walks away from a vessel that’s moored at your facility as part of operating, and yes, it’s expensive to be able to dispose of those, especially if you don’t hang on to them for a while and put them all together and do it all at once,” Bretz said.

On June 23rd of this year, the Port of Newport learned that a privately owned fishing vessel, the Ashtella Rhelyn, had sunk at Port Dock 7.

While the owner said he thought he had insurance, in the end, he did not. The US Coast Guard had fuel removed from the vessel, and since then, the owner has been unresponsive to the Port of Newport’s queries.

FDS Salvage estimated the recovery would cost $325,000. The Port of Newport filed two insurance claims. A $250,000 claim to remove the vessel, which has already been paid. Aaron Bretz said the port will almost certainly not spend all the money and will return the unused portion. 

The port filed a second claim but has yet to establish a maximum amount as the port finalizes the cost of repairs for damage done to the dock.

The Ashtella Rhelyn was recently raised from the bottom and transported to the Port of Toledo shipyard.

Ted Mandell is coordinating the disposal of the vessel. Mandell said abandoned vessels are a big problem for ports and work he would rather not to do. He prefers refitting vessels rather than taking them apart for disposal. 

The shipyard will save the Ashtella Rhelyn’s engine and any aluminum for scrap. They’ll also save sellable parts. For Mandell it’s the challenge of finding hidden tanks or crannies where difficult substances may linger, like fuel or lubricating oil or some other hazardous contaminant.

“We have to have it tested for asbestos. A company comes in and does that,” Ted Mandell said standing next to the carcass of the Ashtella Rhelyn. “And then we have to get all the fluids off, you know, hydraulic oil, engine oil, diesel fuel.” 

Once the fluids are gone, the shipyard hires a heavy equipment operator to take the vessel apart and load its broken pieces into the truck of a nearby waste disposal company, Dahl Disposal.

Port of Toledo manager Debbie Scacco told me abandoned vessels are a giant, pricey problem for many Oregon ports because many ports cannot easily dispose of them. 

“There’s some ports that are trying to demo boats that have been left in their, abandoned in their marina, but they don’t have the disposal company like we have access to, so they can’t dispose, they can’t get the permits to dispose of their waste,” Scacco said. “So we’re lucky we don’t have to have a waste disposal permit because we have Dahl’s Disposal right here with their waste disposal permit.”

But that doesn’t mean shipbreaking, as it’s known, is easy or inexpensive. Scacco said that any industrial process near sensitive coastal waterways is tricky.

“Environmental compliance, storm water pollution, and the nature of the boat yard is we’re on the river,” Scacco said pointing toward the Yaquina river. “We  can’t do our work away from the river. That’s it. We’re on the river. So we just have to be very careful, everything we do and contain that waste and dispose of it correctly.”

The Ashtella Rhellyn was a vessel that sank at the dock and posed distinct safety and environmental hazards, and this time insurance covered the cost of removal and disposal. But that was a one-off. The Port of Newport and ports across the coast are typically left to foot the bill when someone walks away from a vessel.  

Josh Mulhollem is the Waterway Stewardship Program manager for the Oregon Department of State Lands. He said the state has a fund for the removal of abandoned vessels, but that his agency does more than just spend money and get rid of old boats. Prevention through education and outreach help head off the problem, and boat removal is important too. 

“When the Abandoned and Derelict Vessel program was created at the Department of State Lands, and that was by a piece of legislation in 2023” Mulhollem said over the phone. “A companion bill provided, I call it seed money to the ADV Fund, which the program oversees. And that was born out of the Monsanto settlement that the state received. And so $18.8 million was put into that fund, and that’s currently what we use to remove abandoned and derelict vessels.”

Ports and country governments affected by ADVs are chief among the recipients of boat removal grants, according to Mulhollem, but the scope of the ADV problem in Oregon is much larger than the fund can address.

“Unfortunately, in the real world, we just can’t, we aren’t able to fund it all” Mulhollem said. “There’s just not enough funds available, nor are there enough resources in terms of time.” 

I asked Mulhollem how his agency establishes funding priorities with limited resources.

“The environmental concern, the environmental impact is a primary driver. Vessels that are known to contain hazardous materials. Certainly a lot of older vessels. There are a couple military vessels that the department has dealt with in recent years that were built, 70, 80, years ago, at least. And some of those contain some some problematic levels of PCBs, lead paint, other things that are significant hazards to the environment. 

“But then when we’re considering derelict vessels, and those are typically those that have sunk, looking at the impact to the habitat, to the area in which it sank. We recently dealt with a relatively small vessel, but one that was sunk in a very sensitive habitat on the southern coast, and that environmental impact, that concern does often dictate what might happen with that vessel, how much of it is a priority for us, as well as others in the area we work very closely with, county governments, tribes, some environmental groups to identify those vessels that are posing that biggest environmental impact, and we do prioritize as such,” Mulhollem said.

If given one wish, Aaron Bretz, Debbie Scacco, and Josh Mulhollem would all make the people who abandon their vessels ultimately responsible for their recovery and disposal.

The Port of Newport is not responsible for the custodial care of the many personal and commercial vessels moored in their marinas. Aaron Bretz said the port operates much like a long-term parking lot, but that the port is compelled to monitor vessels when boats are not tended.

“When we see problems, we try to do our best in that regard. We probably do better than, certainly better than we have to. We do the best we can to keep an eye on things. When there’s a problem with a boat, we contact the owner. We let them know you got a problem with your boat. 

“But we don’t have custodial care over these vessels. But when somebody abandons one, then we do have to, we have to watch that boat. We have to, somebody’s got to do a round on it pretty much daily. We have to make sure it’s not sinking. 

“And a lot of times these are end-of-life vessels that are taking on water in a lot of cases, and so we’ve got to do our best to try and keep them up until we can get them disposed of. So yeah, it takes a lot of time and money,” Bretz said.

And looking forward, Aaron Bretz and the Port of Newport have yet to estimate a budget for the removal and disposal of the 16 abandoned boats they’ve collected over the past three years or how they’ll pay for it.