Newport's dilemma: good jobs vs. big risks

Newport's dilemma: good jobs vs. big risks: "Newport's dilemma: good jobs vs. big risks
Values - A company wants Yaquina Bay as its West Coast base for hazardous ship work
Sunday, December 04, 2005
PETER SLEETH

They call themselves 'ship breakers,' and they want to coax a ghost fleet to Oregon.

The fleet is real, a mothballed collection of government ships, no more ethereal than the men who will split the ships from stem to stern. They could start to arrive in Newport within 90 days.

Bay Bridge Enterprises, LLC, a Virginia-based company owned by an Indian firm with offices in the United Arab Emirates, is moving rapidly to set up a ship recycling yard on Yaquina Bay, just a mile from the tourist-oriented waterfront and across from the Hatfield Marine Sciences Center. The job is quite simple on its face: Break the ships into small pieces and sell them for scrap. But it also is dirty and dangerous work. Some of the ships are as long as football fields and weigh about 6,000 tons.
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