The Port and Harbors Department wants to strengthen municipal code to lessen the burden of paying for derelict and impounded vessels. It drains the department’s coffers when clunkers take on water or sink, leading port staff to foot the cleanup efforts and the department to foot the bill.
The port commission is asking the borough assembly to amend municipal code to hold boat owners liable for disposing of derelict boats.
The commission has also begun discussing whether to require boat owners to have insurance if their vessel is moored in a Wrangell harbor.
What they’re discussing, in the words of port commission member John Martin at last Thursday’s meeting, is potentially requiring everyone to be “adults.” Excluding skiffs, vessel owners should be required to have insurance if they’re going to moor in a Wrangell harbor, so if a boat does go down, the insurance pays for it and the port and harbors fund isn’t on the hook, wiping out its funds that could go toward float maintenance or other expenses the fund is responsible to cover.
For owners who refuse to show proof of insurance, Port Director Steve Miller proposes a “sinking fund” — that’s a working title, he said – in which a surcharge of $2, $3 or $5 per foot, per month would be paid by the uninsured boat owner, deposited into the “sinking fund” which would be used solely for recovery and disposal costs.
“It’s never going to get cheaper to dispose of these vessels,” Miller said at the meeting.
Miller acknowledged it’s a tough situation, and for fishermen struggling financially, this may hurt. He doesn’t want to cause more problems than they can solve, but every time a derelict vessel goes down it’s a hit to his department.
When the Bee, a 60-foot derelict tug went down at Shoemaker Bay on Jan. 5, it was under the impound process the department began in September, and therefore the former owner was dissolved of liability. The Port and Harbors Department should have pulled the Bee out of the water into dry dock, Miller said, but there was no space for it.
Current municipal code on impoundment put the borough on the hook for disposal.
That led to the department paying for a $21,000 salvage operation in January, after record temperatures froze pumps that harbor staff had been swapping out, thawing, swapping out, thawing. A staff member was checking the pumps every day, but Miller said they’re not sure what happened that first week of the new year during single-digit temperatures, maybe the Bee popped a plank, but everything froze and the Bee took a dive.
After the salvage operation, which required hiring a Ketchikan dive team, it cost the Port and Harbors Department an additional $5,580 to get the Bee broken down and stacked up in the parking lot for recycling of the metal and burning of the wood.
That’s a $26,580 price tag — one derelict vessel in a matter of days wiped out the department’s $30,000 salvage budget. The suggested change to borough ordinance: “The owner shall be liable for the costs of disposing or destroying the vessel.”
The port commission unanimously approved the amended ordinance language, which will go on to the assembly at its May meeting for consideration.
In discussing an insurance requirement, commission member Chris Buness said it may curtail some “dreamers” from buying that third, fourth or fifth boat.
The hardest part is going to be starting this process, Miller said, but new software at the department will help flag which owners don’t have insurance or whose insurance has expired.
Meanwhile, vessels that need to be destroyed in Wrangell are split about 50/50 between wood and fiberglass. The department lacks an excavator. Fiberglass boats would need to be broken down with an excavator so the pieces can fit in a shipping container. Wooden boats can be burned on island. Miller estimates the cost of disposal for derelict vessels impounded over the past five years is $60,000 — a long-term issue for the department.
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