SS Princess Kathleen and Ex-USS Chehalis-Guideposts to Wreck Oil Removal

Abstract

Abstract On the morning of September 7th, 1952, the 369-foot SS Princess Kathleen, a Canadian Pacific Railroad vessel built in 1925, grounded and sank near Lena Point, north of Juneau, Alaska. At the time of her grounding, she was loaded with an estimated 155,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil. The SS Princess Kathleen now rests on a slope beneath the water, 53 feet at the bow and 134 feet at her stern. Nearly sixty years after her sinking, the Federal On-Scene Coordinator, under the guidance of the National Contingency Plan, has partnered together with the State of Alaska in a unified effort to remove the pollution threat posed by the SS Princess Kathleen from pristine Alaskan waters. At the same time, nearly 7,000 miles away in the South Pacific, a similar threat is mitigated from the Ex-USS Chehalis, a retired U.S. Navy gasoline tanker that sank as a result of a shipboard explosion in 1949. The two cases, when compared side by side, show striking similarities, yet each maintains itself as an individual suc...