Environmentalists Raise Alarm Over Towing of SS Independence

According to BAN, a vessel of the type and vintage as the 68 year old SS Independence contains large quantities of hazardous materials such as polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, and asbestos. The export and import of these materials are prohibited under the laws of the United States and Singapore.

"This sneaky export in Friday's fog should never have happened as it is a blatant violation of the law," said Jim Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network. "Our laws prevent the export of PCBs either for commerce or disposal, and Singapore also is prohibited from importing this vessel from the U.S. under their international obligations. We demand that the U.S. government orders this renegade U.S. flagged ship returned to San Francisco at once."

The Toxics Substances Control Act forbids the export of PCB-contaminated material from the United States. Ships built in the 1950s contain large quantities of material with high concentrations of PCBs, Puckett says.

The Basel Convention, an international treaty controlling trade in toxic waste, prevents any country that is Party to the Convention such as Singapore, from trading in waste with any country that is not a Party to the Convention such as the United States. For this reason BAN is surprised that the US Coast Guard allowed the towing permits.

The SS Independence was launched on June 3, 1950 by American Export Lines. Designed by famous marine architect Henry Dreyfuss, in 1951 she began sailing on the company's New York - Mediterranean itinerary.

In 1968, with the decline in transatlantic travel, the Independence was laid up at Baltimore. C.Y. Tung bought the idle liner in January 1974 for his Atlantic Far East Lines and renamed her Oceanic Independence. The ship was refitted for 950 passengers for cruising, which included a Portuguese charter out of Africa. However, she was laid up again in January 1976 at Hong Kong.

In 1979 American Hawaii Cruises (C.Y. Tung Group) was formed and the laid up Oceanic Independence was refitted in Japan for inter-island Hawaiian service. On June 21, 1980 she began seven day cruises, sailing Hawaiian waters. In August 1999, Independence began her 1000th Hawaiian cruise with American Hawaii Cruises under American Classic Voyages.

The SS Independence in Hawaiian waters (Photo credit unknown)

She received "Ship Of The Year Award" for the year 2000 from the Steamship Historical Society of America in a gala week of celebration aboard the 50 year old liner.

American Classic Voyages declared bankruptcy in 2001 and the Independence stopped sailing and was laid up in San Francisco.

In 2003 Norwegian Cruise Lines bought the SS Independence and moved it to the former Mare Island Naval Base in Vallejo, California. She never cruised again.

In 2005 ownership was transferred to what Puckett believes to be "a shell company" known as California Manufacturing Corporation. Despite the name, the California Manufacturing Corporation is located in the same building as Star Cruises/NCL in Miami, Florida.

Citing the example of another old ship owned by NCL that was not refurbished but left on the beach at the shipbreaking complex in Alang, India, BAN asserts that that will be the fate of the Independence.

It is "almost a certainty that the SS Independence is headed for the breaking beaches of Bangladesh or India where massive profits can be made due to the high price of steel and because the ships will be dismantled by some of Asia's poorest workers in horrific conditions without proper protective equipment and environmental safeguards being applied," Puckett said.

As member organization of the NGO Platform on Shipbreaking, a global coalition of human rights, environmental, public health, and labor organizations, Puckett says BAN will be "putting out a global alert on the ship SS Independence to ensure that countries turn back the vessel as illegal traffick in hazardous waste."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.