Sinking of storied 'Perfect Storm' ship delayed
Federal environmental officials still have not cleared a famous Coast Guard cutter to be sunk off the New Jersey coast.
Delaware officials had wanted to add the Tamaroa, whose crew rescued seven people from a nor'easter that became known as "The Perfect Storm," to an artificial reef it shares with New Jersey before the end of 2016. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is still waiting for lab results to see if the storied ship is free from cancer-causing PCBs, an agency spokesman said.
The reef attracts large game fish and is a boon to diving and the Garden State’s $1.7 billion recreational fishing industry.
The sinking has been highly anticipated among many current and retired service members ever since news of the Tamaroa’s fate broke in October.
Ship that saved 7 in 'Perfect Storm' to be sunk off N.J.
The ship became famous in 1991 when its crew conducted two rescue missions during a storm that produced 40-foot waves and 70 mph wind gusts off the New England coast. Their heroics were documented years later in the 1997 book and 2000 movie The Perfect Storm, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.
The 73-year-old ship, which served in World War II as the USS Zuni, had been undergoing an extensive cleanup at a shipyard in Norfolk, Va., in preparation for the sinking.
That involves removing all hazardous material, including polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs. Once the most widely used chemicals in electrical equipment, PCBs were banned in 1979 when they were found to cause cancer and other serious ailments.
David Sternberg, an EPA spokesman, said the agency is waiting for lab reports from the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to see if the ship remains contaminated. The EPA then would inspect the ship onsite.
“Once given the OK from EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard, Delaware and New Jersey will be able to proceed with the sinking,” Sternberg said.
Delaware officials had wanted to sink the ship in mid-November, which would have coincided with the 25th anniversary of the storm itself.
Even if the EPA immediately declared the Tamaroa “good to go,” its sinking still would be pushed off until late spring to avoid rough winter weather and choppy seas, said Michael Globetti, a spokesman for the Delaware's environmental agency.
As the Navy tug Zuni, the Tamaroa towed crippled U.S. warships across the war-torn Pacific. It was assigned to the Coast Guard after the war where its crews served for decades intercepting drugs, protecting fisheries and rescuing boaters along the East Coast.
In October 1991, three weather systems slammed into each other creating one of the worst maritime storms in New England history. The crew of the Tamaroa helped save three people on a sailboat before rescuing four of five crewmen of an Air National Guard helicopter that had to be ditched in the ocean when it ran out of fuel during a rescue mission.
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The Tamaroa was decommissioned in 1994. A group of veterans' decade-long effort to restore the ship ended when its hull sprung a significant leak in 2012, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
Delaware and New Jersey bought the ship for about $300,000, much of it raised through nonprofit groups, intending for it to be added to the Del-Jersey-Land Reef about 25 miles south of Cape May Point. It will lay about 120 feet below the surface near the Navy destroyer USS Arthur W. Radford, which was sunk in 2011.
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