An old aircraft carrier filled with asbestos, paint and other toxic waste has been sunk in the Atlantic Ocean. This was announced by the Brazilian navy. The “planned and controlled shipwreck was carried out at the end of the day” yesterday, about 350 kilometers from the Brazilian coast, in an area where the depth of the ocean is about 5,000 metres.
The disputed decision was taken because there were no alternatives, given “the very degraded state of this old 266-metre long ship, considered a “30,000-ton toxic package” by the Robin Hood association. “Faced with the risks involved in towing it and due to the deterioration of the hull, the only solution is to abandon ship by sinking it in a controlled way,” the navy explained in a joint statement with the Defense Ministry in recent days.
The federal prosecutor of Brazil has tried to stop the operation with several appeals to the courts, warning about the consequences for the environment and recalling that the aircraft carrier contains 9.6 tons of asbestos, 644 tons of inks and other dangerous materials: the risk, he underlined, is of “serious environmental damage, especially due to the fact that the hull is damaged.
The environmental NGOs Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and Basel Action Network have denounced “a violation of three international treaties”. Environmental organizations stress that this shipwreck will cause “incalculable damage” with “impacts on marine life and coastal communities”. While defining it as a “tragic” solution, the judge of the federal court of the state of Pernambouc, in the north-east of the country, authorized it considering it inevitable, since the state of the hull would soon have caused a spontaneous shipwreck of the ship, and its towing would have endangered the personnel who would have carried it out.
