A government watchdog group on Tuesday accused Washington State Ferries of courting disaster by continuing to operate four 80-year-old ferries.
The state’s four Steel Electric-class vessels have been beset this year by leaks, cracks and questions, and more than $3.5 million in unanticipated repairs. None meets Coast Guard standards in effect since the mid-1950s for watertight hull compartments.
The nonprofit Evergreen Freedom Foundation on Tuesday posted an item on its Web site describing the 1927-vintage ferries as “Washington state’s Titanic.”
“They are operating on Coast Guard waiver. This is a disaster waiting to happen,” the group’s president, Bob Williams, wrote.
The group chided ferry officials and state leaders for not replacing the vessels earlier, in spite of Legislative approval and funding for new ferries in 2001.
Mike Anderson, the ferry system’s executive director, last week told lawmakers that the Steel Electrics are “nearing the end of their useful life” and that one, the Nisqually, may be too far gone to salvage.
Results of a hull survey that may help determine the Nisqually’s fate are expected next week, said Marta Coursey, communication director for the ferry system.
The Steel Electric ferries are the only vessels in the state’s fleet small enough and agile enough to navigate the rough water and narrow harbors between Keystone on Whidbey Island and Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.
Their potential loss has ferry officials acknowledging that the route could be closed if an alternative to the Steel Electrics is not found soon.
That’s unacceptable when the state is pursuing construction of four new ferries, all too large to replace the Steel Electrics, said Tom Henry, deputy communications director for the Evegreen Freedom Foundation.
“If the issue is moving people and cars across the waterways, you’ve got to build vessels that can handle those waterways,” he said.
In order to prevent the route from being shut down, Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, last week said she may push ferry system officials to redraft recently approved plans for building four new 144-car ferries over the next several years.
She wants the state to instead consider building two ferries that will fit into Keystone Harbor on Whidbey, something only the Steel Electrics can now do. The 144-car ferries the state wants to build are simply too big to serve the route.
The state has wrestled much of the year with a string of hull cracks and other problems on its oldest boats. In March, ferry officials operated the Klickitat for two days with a six-inch crack in the hull.
The latest troubles have revolved around corrosion of the stern tubes, the cast-iron pipes that house the ferries’ propeller shafts where they run through the hull. The stern tubes have been in salt water since 1927, when the Steel Electrics were first launched in California’s San Francisco Bay.
Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.
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