On a sunny morning this week, Vincent Bowhers stood on the Willoughby Boat Ramp in Norfolk, below bustling traffic on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
Right along the dock a mast rose out of the water, the only part of a boat that is not yet submerged. Bowhers pointed out other abandoned boats farther out in the water and on the horizon in nearly every direction.
“We are looking at an array of sunken vessels,” said Bowhers, restoration coordinator for Lynnhaven River Now.
For the past few years, the Virginia Beach nonprofit has spearheaded a project to identify abandoned boats like these throughout coastal Virginia and figure out how to get rid of them.
With nearly $3 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program, the group expects to remove nearly 100 abandoned and derelict vessels, or ADVs, in Hampton Roads over the next year, Bowhers said.
It’s a growing problem in Virginia.
“In the years to come, ADVs will pollute Virginia’s waterways at an ever-increasing pace if we don’t work together to solve this problem,” state officials said in a public awareness video a few years ago. “The time to act is now.”
Abandoned boats cause a variety of problems, Bowhers said. That includes blocking navigation, harming the environment through rotting materials or spilled chemicals and simply becoming a community eyesore.
Several are stuck along the shoreline of Naval Station Norfolk.
“Some of those vessels have masts sticking up that are blocking flight operations,” Bowhers said. “The Navy is having to work around those vessels and of course would like to see them gone.”
Removing ADVs, however, is notoriously difficult.
The first step is to track down a boat’s owner. Sometimes that’s impossible because they have scrubbed off its identification number or the number has eroded beyond recognition.
Even when the owner is identified, they may have skipped town, sold the boat to someone else without paperwork or lack the resources to deal with it.
Another challenge is getting permission, including determining the jurisdiction of waterways where the boats are located. Some spots are controlled by local governments, others owned by the state, Coast Guard or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
It can then cost several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars to remove a sunken boat, clean up any hazardous substances and haul materials to a landfill that will accept them.
Lynnhaven River Now is approved for 33 removals so far, including in the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River, the Middle Peninsula, the North Landing River in Virginia Beach and Willoughby Bay in Norfolk.
That includes seven sitting in slips at the Willoughby Marina.
Manager Lanika Jackson said derelict vessels are a serious issue for marina owners.
People who don’t want or can’t afford to maintain their boats often leave them behind, stop paying rent and don’t respond to calls from the marina.
“It takes away from new boaters that we would like to come in,” Jackson said. “They see all of these eyesores here, and they're saying, ‘Well, we don't want to be associated with that.’ So that hurts us.”
If the boats sink before they are auctioned off, the marina pays out of pocket to raise them, “which is very financially stressing,” she said.
Licensed contractors started removals this week, beginning with vessels on the Navy shoreline.
Bowhers said the process involves sending a diver down to place airbags around the vessel that inflate and float the boat up to be towed away.
