GROUNDED SHIP RUSTS IN PEACE.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

COOS BAY - Like some ugly rock permanently squatting in the scenery, it remains: an empty, rotting shell stuck in the sand not far from where it ran aground five years ago today.

Waves pound mercilessly at the 1,500-ton ghost of the New Carissa with such force that saltwater leaps stories above the ship's rusted stern before returning to the receding tide.

Each year, bits and pieces of the stern break off and get carried toward the beach or out to sea. Barnacles, starfish and sea anemones have taken up residence inside. Seabirds perch on the deck.

But for this stubborn reminder - along with a informational sign on the beach and a warning sign to remind curious visitors that the stern could still shift at any time - it's as if the 639-foot wood chip carrier never ran aground here.

The media packed up their cameras and note pads and left years ago. Volunteers ran out of tar balls to scoop into plastic bags. The ship hasn't leaked any oil for years. Tourists got their fill of staring at the inglorious stretch of Oregon Coast.

But the sea's efforts to remove the battered hull have proved as fruitless as human attempts. So it stays while lawyers battle over how much the ship's owners should pay to have it removed, the government continues to tally the damage to area wildlife done by the 70,000 gallons of oil spilled and biologists determine what's necessary to restore the habitat.

"I can't believe it's been five years," said Monte Turner, a spokesman for the Oregon Division of State Lands, which sued the ship's owners - Taiheiyo Kaiun Co. Ltd. of Japan and two subsidiaries, TMM Co. Ltd. of Japan and Green Atlas Shipping S.A. of Panama - over how much they'll pay to have the ship removed.

But Larry Mangan can. He has devoted a good portion of the past five years to studying the New Carissa's effects on the environment as a senior wildlife biologist with the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM owns about 80 acres of the North Spit, where the ship ran aground.

The Oil Pollution Act, passed by Congress in 1990 after the notorious Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, mandates the "trustees of the United States" to restore damage to surrounding natural resources from oil spills at the expense of the responsible party.

Mangan points out that the act provides that such losses be restored to a "pre-spill baseline," so the population level of a particular species, for example, returns to what it was at the time of the spill.

That has led mainly to a focus on the threatened Western snowy plover, the threatened marbled murrelet and the loss of recreation opportunities at the site. The latter is measured by the number of beaches closed by the spill and the average number of visitors there.

In May, the bureau will release a damage report identifying the effects on all three categories. Among its preliminary findings: 2,300 seabirds (mostly murrelet) died as a result of the disaster; 500 to 800 shorebirds suffered exposure to oil along with 23 to 100 gulls; and the public lost 28,000 opportunities to visit the closed beaches.

Only a handful of plovers died, but the area where the shipwreck occurred had been the shorebirds' most productive nesting grounds on the coast, so biologists have tracked them carefully. As it turns out, the plover didn't suffer as badly as feared from the oil spill, Mangan said.

"Those that were oiled reproduced about as well as those that weren't oiled," he said.

In the next step in the damage assessment, the bureau will propose a series of habitat restoration projects for the birds. Once the report is complete, it will be presented to the public for comment.

As for the legal battles, a federal appeals court last August upheld the $1.4 million jury award to a Coos Bay oyster farm for damages from the ship.

In January, the ship's owners transferred $25 million to an escrow account, where it's being held pending their appeal of a Coos County jury verdict that found three companies liable for damages to the state. That process could take a year or more to conclude.

In April, a three-week trial in federal court is scheduled to begin in Portland on a $96 million lawsuit by the ship's owners, alleging that U.S. Coast Guard charts didn't indicate the New Carissa's anchorage was in dangerous waters, made more so by dredging spoils. The government countersued for $7 million for cleanup costs.

Once the state suit is resolved, Turner said, his department will examine methods for removing the battered stern.

Among the options: bringing in a giant "jack-up barge" that would plant its legs into the bedrock for anchor, providing a stable platform above the water, then using cranes and cutting tools to slice the remains into pieces and haul them away. There's also talk of building a dock to the wreckage and taking the pieces out over land. "It may be that other ideas pop up in the meantime," Turner said.

THE SAGA

Feb. 3, 1999: The New Carissa, a 639-foot freighter headed for Coos Bay to pick up a load of wood chips, anchors two miles off the Coos Bay North Spit because the bar is too rough to cross.

Feb. 4: The anchor begins to drag. The Filipino crew tries to raise the anchor and move to deeper water, but winds and waves push the ship toward shore. It runs aground at 8:30 a.m.

Feb. 5: U.S. Coast Guard helicopters lift 23 crew members and a bar pilot from the ship.

Feb. 8: Onboard tanks containing about 400,000 gallons of bunker and diesel fuel are reported leaking. The ship ultimately leaks about 70,000 gallons of fuel.

Feb. 11: The ship is torched to try to burn off the fuel inside the hull, the first such effort in the contiguous 48 states. Fire consumes about 200,000 gallons of fuel and the ship splits in half in the process.

Feb. 21: Efforts to pump remaining oil from the bow section end because the fuel is too thick to move.

March 1: The tug Sea Victory pulls the bow section off the North Spit and heads out to sea to a scuttling site. The stern remains on the beach.

March 2: The bow breaks loose from the tug in a violent storm 50 miles offshore and drifts ashore the next day near Waldport, where it leaks about 2,000 gallons of fuel.

March 9: Sea Victory pulls bow off the beach at Waldport.

March 11: The 440-foot bow section, still carrying 135,000 gallons of oil, sinks in nearly 11,000 feet of water 320 miles off the Oregon Coast after a a U.S. Navy submarine fires a MK-48 torpedo into it. The hulk survived the detonation of 380 pounds of strategically placed plastic explosives and 69 5-inch rounds fired from a Navy destroyer.

May 20: The Coast Guard ends federal involvement in Coos Bay after salvage crews remove about 14,000 gallons of oil from the stern. It declares the stern no longer a pollution threat, even though it continues to periodically burp small amounts of oil.

June: A joint venture by Donjon Marine Co. of New Jersey and Fred Devine Diving & Salvage Co. of Portland moves ahead under a contract with the ship's owner to remove the stern from the North Spit, as urged by Gov. John Kitzhaber. The plan is to patch up the engine room and tow most of the stern to a deep-water disposal site.

Oct. 26: Unexpectedly heavy seas push the stern 150 feet back to shore after the Salvage Chief and a tug had pulled the hulk about 270 feet from where it went aground.

Oct. 29: Donjon Devine says it will suspend the salvage effort until spring because of the setback and expected bad weather. Officials say they succeeded in cutting away about a third of the wreck and removed a large amount of oil and other pollutants.

Feb. 1, 2000: The Coast Guard ends federal oversight of cleanup operations in Coos Bay because so little oil has been found on the beach near the stern. Monitoring and cleanup work continues under an agreement between the state and the ship's representatives.

January 2003: The ship's owners transfer $25 million into an escrow account, after a Coos County jury finds for the state in a lawsuit to remove the stern from the bay's North Spit.

August 2003: A federal appeals court upholds the $1.4 million jury damage award to a Coos Bay oyster farm.

April 2004:Three-week trial is scheduled in the ship owners' lawsuit against the government for $96 million. The ship's owners claim U.S. Coast Guard charts didn't indicate its anchorage was in dangerous waters. The government has countersued for $7 million for cleanup costs.

CAPTION(S):

A workman watches from the beach as a towline is drawn taut during attempts to remove the grounded freighter New Carissa from the surf. The New Carissa burns after a remote-controlled detonation of the fuel tanks ignited an oil fire which officials hoped would burn up most of the onboard fuel, which has been leaking into the waters off Coos Bay since the cargo ship ran aground (AP Photo) The Associated Press Flames light the night after the ship was set afire to remove fuel that was aboard when it went aground. Brian Davies / The Register-Guard The New Carissa rests in the surf shortly after its grounding near Coos Bay in 1999.