U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Public Affairs Washington, D.C. www.dot.gov/affairs/briefing.htm

News

MARAD 05-08	Contact: Shannon Russell
Friday, February 29, 2008	Tel.: (202) 366-5807

U.S. Department of Transportation To Recycle Three More Ships

Texas Firm Wins Million-Dollar Contract

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration has signed contracts totaling $1,136,106 for the recycling of three obsolete ships from its reserve fleets. All three ships will be recycled at the Esco Marine facility in Brownsville, Texas.

Two of the ships, Cape Catoche and Cape Carthage, are in the James River Reserve Fleet site at Fort Eustis in Virginia. When they depart the James River site for recycling, they will be the 68^th and 69^th ships to do so since January of 2001. The third ship, Del Viento, is in the Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Texas.

“Each time we move an obsolete ship out, we make an important contribution to maintaining the local ecosystem,” said Maritime Administrator Sean T. Connaughton. The Cape Carthage and the Cape Catoche are both breakbulk freighters built at the Avondale shipyard in Alabama in 1963. The Del Viento, also a breakbulk freighter, was built at the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in 1968.

The Maritime Administration keeps ships in three National Defense Reserve Fleet sites to support Armed Forces movements and to respond to national emergencies. Those sites are the James River Reserve Fleet in Newport News, Virginia; Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Beaumont, Texas; and Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in Benicia, California. When the ships become obsolete, the Maritime Administration arranges for their disposition in an environmentally sensitive manner.

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