USS Radford; Wreck to reef project

[Music] [Music] from the looks of it you may not think this US Navy destroyer is ready for the scrap heat well it's not because we're going to sink it annually countless ships are scuttled around the globe as artificial reefs nearly half the states in the US border a CO Co line and just about all of them have some sort of artificial Reef program and just about all of them are looking to get their hands on a vessel like this one this former US warship has been given the reprieve from The Cutting torch but only to be given the Deep 6 as the largest artificial Reef ever to be scuttled anywhere along the US Atlantic coast and these are the guys that are going to make that happen hi I'm Patrick pich with the American Marine Group and we sing ships we're here in Philadelphia and behind me is the former USS Arthur W Radford a spru class destroyer that is destined to become an artificial Reef about 26 miles south of Cape May New Jersey my name is Tim main I'm the last captain of the Arthur W Radford my company's preparing it to be sunk as an artificial Reef I've been involved with 50 60 sinkings for artificial reefs all over the East Coast but this will be the longest ship that we've sunk to date uh as an artificial Reef sple Grove was 540 ft This ship's actually going to be uh 563 you may think sinking a ship is easy well think again there's a host of state and federal regulations that need to be met in the case of the USS Radford there are three states involved because it takes a pile of cash to put these Behemoth on the bottom the Bradford reefing project is a joint State approach it's just not being done by New Jersey Delaware and Maryland are participating uh each state is contributing equally to the cost of preing the vessel there's a lot of things that need to be done on the vessel and it's expensive to get these vessels ready my role as well as Mary and my wife we are the trustees on the foundation and we donated the money that New Jersey needed uh to fulfill its portion of this particular project so no taxpayer dollars were used now that you paid for it you just can't pull the plug and let it sink all the nasty stuff that may be toxic or create a hazard for divers has got to go and luckily for the contractor some of that stuff can be recycled that we the taxpayers of the United States of America have paid for and bought one of the finest vessels that can ever be put onto the uh Open Seas uh there's high high amounts of copper copper nickel monel incel and so forth and these are all high value um high cost Metals we're able to put in a much lower bid um just by um uh basing our recyclables on it the bridge level up uh is all uh aluminum and that needs to be removed first and foremost so that the boat has a um a keel a bridge level of 70 ft so when we sink the boat off offshore which will give us 60 ft of clearance for navigable waterways okay release uh it's about 8 tons of aluminum right now and that can be recycled you know into beer cans or uh deck chairs there's a lot of wire in this vessel there's miles and miles of of insulated wire now one thing that New Jersy Delaware and Maryland are doing differently with this vessel than was done with uh the ariskin and the Vandenburg is we're removing this wire um the insulation around the wire may contain pcbs we're taking it all off okay as far as toxics in this ship it's a relatively new warship the kill was laid in 1977 and it was decommissioned in 2003 and one of the reasons New Jersey Delaware and marijan went after this vessel because it was low into toxic because it was so new these cables are solid copper worth big bucks and the fact that they may contain toxic compounds means that they're killing two birds with one stone by yanking it all out to be recycled besides the challenge of making a buck off the stuff they're yanking off of it they're also on the clock the longer it takes to get this rust bucket stripped clean and on the bottom the longer the money meter is going to be running the meter for parking a ship this size takes a lot of quarters and for every day it sits at the dock it brings up a massive bill that comes right off the bottom line and even if you're all ready to go you best hope the weather gods are on your side we're not setting a specific date on sinking we're looking more for a specific week because not going to be flat calm or where we can work on it where all the people can be out there on the different boats to observe it you know what's the point of it why risk going out in in less than perfect weather having a crew this size can rack up a major your pain in the wallet so any delay of just a few days can make the difference of making a buck or going to the poor house [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]