OPINION: Step up efforts to build new fleet of icebreakers

This editorial was published in The Seattle Times.

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The red-and-white Coast Guard Cutter Healy hobbled back to its home port on the Seattle waterfront Aug. 16, the victim of an electrical fire while transiting the Beaufort Sea. The latest setback for the country’s lone Arctic-assigned icebreaker wasn’t just a summer patrol cut short. It was the latest reminder that, as more nations vie for control of the planet’s far north, U.S. presence there is floundering and inadequate.

Regaining a necessary Arctic foothold will require building a new fleet of modern ships capable of breaking through Arctic ice, bolstering Coast Guard recruitment to crew them, and constructing their new home base within the deep waters of Puget Sound. Congress has laid the groundwork for funding but Washington’s own delegation — including its stalwart supportive Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray — should push for more to fully revitalize the program after decades without construction of any new vessels.

Russia, by contrast, has amassed a fleet of at least 40 icebreakers, including nuclear-powered vessels, to exploit untapped oil, gas and mineral deposits. And, with the Arctic warming four times as fast as the rest of the world, Russia is helping blaze a new and shorter global shipping trade as a drought in the Panama Canal and Houthi attacks near the Suez Canal threaten existing routes. Other countries are also building thick-hulled ships capable of busting through ice, including China, which has called for a new “polar silk road,” and is growing commercial and military ties with Russia in the region.

The Times editorial board has long called for increased American leadership, through the Coast Guard, to keep track and be a check on the increasing activity in the Arctic; to study and protect the precious but precarious environment of the far north; and most critically, perform missions that preserve national security.

Since 1976, Seattle has been the home port of the Coast Guard’s icebreakers, providing a sheltered and deep water home with sea routes to both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Seattle’s place as gateway to the Arctic dates back to the days of the Klondike Gold Rush; the walrus tusk-adorned Arctic Building at Third Avenue and Cherry Street, originally built as a social club for far-north explorers, stands as a testament.

Bolstering the Coast Guard’s decision to home port the first three new icebreakers here is Washington’s maritime legacy and an available workforce of 62,000. The region is home to the country’s fourth largest container gateway, the North Pacific Fishing Fleet and the third largest concentration of U.S. Navy ships. The Coast Guard vessels will add to Puget Sound’s maritime prowess, creating even more jobs and work in the industry.

Construction of these vessels is proceeding too slowly within the country’s atrophied shipbuilding industry. Congress has funded about $1.7 billion as a down payment for new polar security cutters; the first new icebreaker in a half century is under construction at a Mississippi shipyard — albeit years behind schedule — and the first three are expected to cost $5.1 billion, almost $2 billion more than budgeted. Meanwhile, planning and environmental review continues for a new dock and facilities and dredging at the Coast Guard’s Seattle base, south of Colman Dock, with room for the three. The project is crucial to the program’s success.

In July, the U.S., Finland and Canada signed a new trilateral agreement to expedite production of icebreakers in the three nations. In the short term, Congress appropriated $125 million for the Coast Guard to buy an off-the-shelf oil exploration vessel to convert to an icebreaker. That ship will have Juneau, Alaska, as its home port.

In the meantime, the Coast Guard must find ways to beef up recruitment. The 55,000-person service is short about 10% of its recruitment goals, causing the layup of some vessels without personnel to operate them. Affordability and access to medical care will be challenges in Seattle, as elsewhere.

The Polar Star was set to return to Elliott Bay over the weekend. Each year, the vessel treks to the Antarctic to break ice and supply the National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station. It might be the last time the Star, the defunct icebreaker Polar Sea — now just used for parts — and Healy are docked together. Coast Guard officials say the Polar Sea will soon head to mothballs in California.

Congress must keep pushing to realize the long overdue goal of three new icebreakers lining the Seattle base.

TNS