Crews remove oil from ship beached near Camas

Oil contained inside a 431-foot ship beached on the north shore of the Columbia River near Camas has been removed, a contractor who worked on the cleanup announced in a press release.

An administrative order issued by the Coast Guard last week gave the owners of the ship until Monday to have the oil removed. Ballard Diving & Salvage, a Seattle-based company with an office in Vancouver, was contracted by the ship’s owners and completed the task of removing oil from inside the derelict vessel ahead of the Monday deadline.

The ship, called the SS Davy Crockett, was a cargo, or Liberty, boat used by the Navy during World War II. The ship was built in 1942.

Lt. Charles Taylor said on Saturday the boat was recently sold and neither party was willing to take ownership of the cleanup. The Coast Guard could not provide information on who owns the boat, which may have been moored at its spot for some time. It was run aground by the recent high water.

Coast Guard crews on Saturday put up a boom, or type of wall, to contain some light oil sheen that’s likely residual from when the boat first hit the bank.

The Coast Guard threatened to clean the spill and charge three times the actual cost. That possibility was apparently a sufficient motivator for the parties involved in the ship’s sale to hire a contractor.

The owners will also be billed for the Coast Guard’s time overseeing the cleanup, an expense that was being covered by the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.

Salvage crews used sonar and remote underwater vehicles to locate and clean all oil sources on the ship.