A year ago the first of the US ghost ships arrived in Hartlepool, amid huge controversy. But what has happened since?Gavin Havery reports

THE jaws of a mechanical shovel snap shut around a mouthful of sediment from the bed of the Seaton channel and it is carefully wound back up to the innocuous-looking dingy that has been collecting samples for the last year.

Once aboard, the silt is methodically deposited into 60 different jars.

Back on shore they are carefully packed and sent to Environment Agency laboratories to see if the four former US Navy ships from a supposedly toxic Ghost Fleet have had the adverse impact on the environment campaigners feared.

Water samples are also taken from various points in the Seaton channel and Able UK's Hartlepool dock, where the ships have been moored untouched for the last year.

Able UK has been forced by the Environment Agency to carry out tests to prove the mercury, oil, lead and asbestos from the ships they hope to dismantle have not polluted the water.

A year on, the Environment Agency says their presence in Teesside Environmental Reclamation and Recycling Centre at Graythorp Dock, in Hartlepool, has had no impact.

But instead of creating 200 jobs as he hoped, managing director Peter Stephenson said he has had to lay as many workers off because of the lengthy legal wrangles on both sides of the Atlantic that have put the plan on ice.

The massive, rusting hulk of Caloosahatchee, a 15,000-tonne US Navy warship built in 1945, arrived after months of ethical and environmental arguments.

Environmentalists argued that the UK should not be used as a dumping ground for unwanted US warships.

Hundreds of Hartlepool residents mobilised into action and summoned the help of Friends of the Earth when they heard of Able UK's plan to break up 13 vessels from the US Naval Reserve fleet.

A fiercely fought campaign could not stop four vessels setting off on the 4,000 mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean from the James River in Virginia.

An injunction prevented the nine others leaving after US courts stepped in.

Judicial reviews brought by three Hartlepool residents in December upheld the view that Able UK did not have planning permission to create a dry dock and that a waste management licence had been revoked, meaning no work could be done on the ships.

Today, Graythorp Dock is home to Caloosahatchee, along with Canisteo, an 11,000-tonne refuelling tanker, the 39-year-old submarine tender Canopus and the Compass Island, built in 1953.

Councillor Geoff Lilley, who represents Greatham ward in Hartlepool, is a member of the Teesside environmental group Impact and Friends of the Earth.

He said: "The objectors are even more adamant that the ships should not stay in Hartlepool and the remaining ones should not be sent here.

"The ships were seen as being an environmental threat in America and they were glad to see the back of them.

"This has opened up the issue of ship recycling in general and that is very important.

"It is a Pandora's Box because once you open it up you don't know what is inside."

Able UK's managing director Peter Stephenson is still determined not only to break up the ships, but to bring more ships to Teesside for dismantling.

He is going to apply to Hartlepool Borough Council for planning permission to carry out the operation at the end of this month.

If that is granted he must then apply to the Environment Agency for a waste management licence.

Once the firm has the necessary paperwork in place it has aspirations to bring up to 80 vessels to its yard for breaking, a scheme which could, he says, generate 1,000 jobs and bring £35m worth of investment to the North-East by 2010.

If Able UK continues to jump through the necessary environmental hoops, Mr Stephenson's ship-scrapping dream could become a reality.

Read more about the Ghost Ships campaign here.