[Infowarrior] - Vandenberg to become 2nd largest intentional reef

[Richard Forno]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090525/ap_on_re_us/us_sinking_the_vandenberg_1

Ship to become 2nd largest intentional reef


By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer Brian Skoloff, Associated  
Press Writer – Mon May 25, 10:11 am ET

KEY WEST, Fla. – Aboard the Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a massive World  
War II ship last used by the U.S. Air Force to track missiles and  
spacecraft, it's anything but business as usual.

Crews are preparing the decommissioned ship for sinking Wednesday  
seven miles off Key West, where it will become one of the world's  
biggest man-made reefs. Explosives attached to the ship's hull beneath  
the water level will be detonated to open it for flooding, which  
should quickly send it to the sea floor. The 17,000 ton, 523-foot-long  
ship will be sunk on a sandy bottom in about 140 feet of clear water.

"Don't go to the bathroom. Don't go get a beer. It should be under  
three minutes for the ship to fully deploy onto the bottom," said Joe  
Weatherby, project organizer at Reefmakers, a Moorestown, N.J.-based  
company that specializes in acquiring, preparing and sinking craft to  
create artificial reefs.

It's a project that has been years in the making.

The cost is about $8.6 million, from acquiring the ship to cleaning  
it. Officials in the Florida Keys expect it to pay dividends, up to $8  
million in annual tourism-related revenue, mostly from divers flocking  
to get a look at the underwater spectacle.

The idea is to not only to attract tourists, but to help protect the  
Keys' natural reefs, already suffering from excessive diving,  
snorkeling and fishing along with warming ocean temperatures.

Weatherby said people — and fish — will now be drawn to the wreck from  
nearby natural coral, "giving the reef a breather, which is what it  
needs."

Preparation for sinking has taken months of inspections and cleanup to  
remove contaminants. Workers hauled off more than a million feet of  
wire, 1,500 vent gaskets, dozens of watertight steel doors, 81 bags of  
asbestos, 193 tons of potentially cancer-causing substances, 46 tons  
of garbage that could come loose and float to the surface, 300 pounds  
of materials containing mercury and 185 55-gallon drums of paint chips.

The cleanup was performed at two Norfolk, Va., shipyards before the  
boat made the 1,100-mile voyage, arriving in Key West on April 22.  
Permitting was required from 18 local, state and federal agencies.

The Vandenberg began as the Gen. Harry Taylor and was later  
commissioned by the Army as a transport vessel, ferrying troops and  
supplies from San Francisco to island bases in the western Pacific  
Ocean in 1944.

In 1945, it carried troops home from Europe near the end of World War  
II. It was later used by the Navy as a transport ship, and was  
transferred to the Air Force in 1961, when it was renamed the  
Vandenberg.

For about 20 more years, the ship served as a missile tracker  
throughout the height of the Cold War and was retired in 1983.

Mac Monroe, a former mission controller aboard the Vandenberg, said he  
was pleased the ship won't be turned into scrap metal.

"It's nice to see the old rust bucket again," Monroe said on a recent  
trip to Key West to see the ship. "And it's a positive outcome for it  
be sunk and become something useful again."

Organizers say it will serve as "the anchor" to the region's wide  
array of existing sunken vessels and wrecks from Key Largo to Key  
West, where some estimate there's a shipwreck about every 300 yards.

The rusty hulk is now tied up at a dock awaiting its final resting  
place on the ocean floor.

Organizers hope the Vandenberg sinking goes more smoothly than that of  
the Spiegel Grove off Key Largo in 2002. That 510-foot decommissioned  
landing ship dock partially sank upside-down, hours before an attempt  
to scuttle it to create an artificial reef. The sudden sinking sent 40  
workers onboard scrambling for safety and left the ship's bow sticking  
out of the water for three weeks.

The Vandenberg will become the world's second largest intentionally  
sunk artificial reef.

In 2006, the USS Oriskany, a decommissioned aircraft carrier nearly  
three football fields in length, was sunk about 24 miles off the coast  
of Pensacola Beach in the Florida Panhandle. That ship became the  
world's largest intentionally sunk artificial reef.

"And it's been paying dividends since before it sank with the people  
coming for the event," Weatherby said. "We expect some of that same  
experience here."