THE OTAPAN, CONTROVERSY OVER ASBESTOS SHIP

Turkey is currently refusing to let a vessel enter its territorial waters because of inaccurate information provided by the Dutch authorities about the quantity of asbestos on board. The Netherlands has been accused of carelessness in its handling of the contaminated Mexican chemical tanker, the Otapan. The Dutch authorities apparently understated the amount of asbestos the vessel contains and also failed to investigate thoroughly whether the Turkish shipyard was capable of dismantling the vessel in a responsible way.

The Otapan had spent six years anchored in Amsterdam because it was seriously contaminated and was only recently towed to Turkey to be dismantled there. Dutch Deputy Minister for the Environment Pieter van Geel says the amount of asbestos the vessel contains is not important. What is important, in his view, is that the ship is dismantled in a responsible way.
 
The fuss about the Otapan makes one almost forget that The Netherlands has all the knowledge to dismantle these kinds of contaminated ships. An insider: ‘It is not very complicated. But if you want to do it right, it is relatively expensive.’ More than a year the Otapan and a ship called the Sandrien were brotherly  lying besides each other, rusting away in the Amsterdam harbour. The ships have about the same size and both were owned by dubious foreign demolition companies, that hoped to make money with scrap. Eventually the Sandrien contained around five thousand kilo’s of asbestos. Now only a few hundreds of kilos are still left. Dutch shipbreakers are daily working on the demolition of the Sandrien. The question that naturally occurs is: why was the Otapan moved to Turkey?

A spokesman of the NGO Platform on Shipbreaking and environmental organisation Greenpeace maintains that the Aliaga shipyard near Izmir in Turkey is not at all equipped to ensure that the Otapan is broken up in an environmentally responsible way or in a way which is safe for humans. A report issued in 2005 by a special rapporteur from the United Nations also expresses concern about the situation at the Turkish shipyard: 
“The economic benefits from shipbreaking are great, but we emphasise the social costs and the impact on the environment, as well as the great risks to the lives and health of the people who work there and who live in the vicinity.”

Deputy Minister Van Geel claims that the shipyard in Izmir is perfectly capable of dismantling the ship properly and that the ministry has carried out its own investigations to establish that. However, the spokeman of the Shipbreaking NGO has his doubts about these claims:  “The Netherlands simply sent a member of the economic staff from the embassy in Ankara to the shipyard. That man said himself that he wasn’t an expert. The Deputy Minister knows very well that no investigation was carried out and also knows that the conditions there are not at all up to the requirements of the most basic kind of sound environmental policy.”

The Mexican tanker had been rusting away in the port of Amsterdam since 1999 when the environmental authorities in the Netherlands prevented it from sailing again because members of the crew, acting on their own initiative, were intent on stripping insulation material which contained asbestos from the vessel. It was the first time anywhere in the world that a government had seized a tanker for this reason. The years that followed saw a legal tug-of-war take place between the Otapan’s owner and the Dutch government, with the central questions being: where should the vessel be dismantled and who should bear the costs. Given that it would cost a great deal to have the work done in the Netherlands, it was ultimately decided that the yard near Izmir would be a better option.

It was the Dutch environment ministry that ordered an investigation into the amount of asbestos on board the Otapan. The resulting report states precisely how much surface asbestos was found on board. Derk Bijvanck says one phone call to the investigator would have been enough to find out the actual amount of asbestos was 5400 kilogrammes: 
“That figure was left out deliberately. The ministry must have known that it wasn’t right at all. And the underhand stuff doesn’t stop there, because the report also says that, in addition to the asbestos, the ships also contains hundreds of tonnes of material that’s contaminated with asbestos. And the deputy minister doesn’t say that.”

 Mr Van Geel has admitted that there is more asbestos on the Otapan than stated by the ministry: “In hindsight, that should have been handled better, but it’s not the essential issue. We want the ship to be broken up in a responsible manner, and that’s possible in Turkey. In that regard, it makes no difference whether it’s 1000 kilogrammes or 5400. There’s no country in the world which is so closely involved in the responsible destruction of contaminated ships as the Netherlands.”

He’s concerned that the wrong message will be sent out if the ship is sent back to the Netherlands:  “We need to be careful that this case doesn’t turn into a licence for everyone to abandon asbestos-contaminated ships in the Netherlands because we’ll take care of it.” The deputy environment minister went to Turkey on Monday for talks on the issue with his Turkish counterpart. more features

September 8 , 2006