Coast Guard

According to recent estimates, as many as 4,000 abandoned vessels may be littering the nation's waterways. These ships, leaking pollutants and often used as illegal dump sites for hazardous materials, pose a constant threat to the environment. Yet no federal law makes abandonment of a vessel illegal, and barge owners are not required to register their ships with the Coast Guard. As a result, the federal government may get stuck with the tab for mounting cleanup costs. Proposed legislation before Congress would overcome many of these problems, prohibiting barge abandonment and mandating barge registration. However, while the legislation seeks to identify barge owners through state-administered vessel registration, GAO is concerned about the temporary nature of the vessel marking now required under the state numbering system.

GAO found that: (1) estimates of the number of abandoned vessels on the East and Gulf coasts and eastern inland waterways range between 1,300 and 4,000; (2) according to Coast Guard officials, its lower estimate focuses only on vessels it considers to be a pollution threat; (3) since January 1988, the Coast Guard has investigated 96 incidents of potential water pollution, and estimated that $5.7 million was expended to clean up the vessels and the pollution from them; (4) the Army Corps of Engineers estimated that it spent $5.2 million to remove 282 abandoned vessels that posed a threat to navigational safety; (5) no federal laws specifically prohibit abandonment of vessels or require that barges be registered so that owners can be identified and held accountable; and (6) the federal government will likely continue to incur costs to remove abandoned vessels and clean up associated pollution.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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