Published in : 02/02/2023 – 21:13

The aircraft carrier Foch will soon sink to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Pass under the flag Brazil in 2000, old building, mainstay of the French navy, to be scuttled due to hull damage, was announced on Wednesday 1 February by Brazilian authorities. An “environmental crime” according to NGOs.

Qualified as a “30,000 tonne toxic package” by the Robin des Bois association, the 266-metre-long old hull was filled with asbestos, paint and other toxic waste, according to several environmental defense organizations.

But the Brazilian navy considered that there was no other option given its heavily degraded state and that “spontaneous sinking” of the hull was unavoidable in the long term.

“Leave the hull by submerging it in a controlled manner”

“Faced with the risks involved in withdrawing and due to damage to the hull (…), the only solution is to abandon the hull by submerging it in a controlled manner,” the navy explained late Wednesday in a joint press release. with the Brazilian Ministry of Defence.

The area some 350 km off the coast of Brazil, 5,000 meters deep, is considered the “safest” for escapees, the statement said.

Two weeks ago, the navy announced that it had brought the former aircraft carrier in the Atlantic. It was previously towed by Dutch tugboats for the Turkish shipyard Sok Denizcilik.

The navy has determined that given its state of degradation and the “high risk” it represents to the environment, it will not allow it to return to port or into Brazilian territorial waters.

Several NGOs later expressed their fear of seeing Brazil commit an “environmental crime”.

“The Brazilian Navy must be condemned for negligence. If they sank this highly toxic ship in the middle of the Atlantic, they would be violating three international environmental treaties for no good reason,” accused Jim Puckett, director of the Basel Action Network (BAN). .

The federal prosecutor’s office had asked a court to prohibit the navy from sinking it, but this request was rejected on Wednesday by a court in the (northeast) state of Pernambuco.

Cancel

The story of the former flagship of the navy, which mainly participated in NATO air operations against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, during the Kosovo crisis, is reminiscent of its sister ship, Clemenceau.

The latter was deconstructed in 2010 in the United Kingdom after being banned in India following a lively controversy over the presence of asbestos on board.

Built in the late 1950s at the Saint-Nazaire shipyard, in western France, Foch served for 37 years in the French Navy.

The ship, capable of ejecting aircraft weighing 12 to 15 tonnes at a takeoff speed of 150 knots, was purchased in 2000 by Brazil, which renamed it Sao Paulo.

But because of its dilapidation and a series of problems associated in particular with the fire in 2005, and when modernization would have been too costly, Brasilia decided to get rid of it.

Sok Denizcilik shipyard bought it for scrap in April 2021 but threatened to abandon it because they couldn’t find a port to accept it.

In June 2022, he obtained authorization from the Brazilian authorities to transport it to Turkey for dismantling.

Hazardous waste

But while he was at the end of August at the Straits of Gibraltar level, Turkey’s environmental authorities announced that he was no longer welcome.

Brazil made her turn around but without allowing her to dock despite finding “increasing damage” to the hull.

On January 19, the Dutch tugboat ALP Guard operating on behalf of the yard began to pull away from the coast of Brazil, having spent several months in Pernambuco.

But a court ruling prohibited him from sailing in international waters without prior permission from Brazilian authorities.

This is why Brazil’s public environmental agency Ibama, responsible in Brazil for implementing the Basel Convention on the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes, finally requested intervention from the Brazilian navy.

With AFP