Derelict boat owners leave taxpayers on the hook for thousands in removal costs
Removing derelict boats
Junk boats are littering Bay Area waterways, but it’s not always easy to find the owners, which means tax payers are footing the bill to remove the vessels.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Abandoned boats that litter Bay Area waterways are costing taxpayers thousands of dollars to remove and destroy because it is often difficult to find the owners.
Like pockmarks on paradise, the abandoned hulks of discarded boats in local waterways are dangerous eyesores.
Aimee Conlee, of Urban Kai, warns her paddleboard customers about a sailboat mast sticking out of the water near her rental stand along Gandy Boulevard. Her worry: "Someone not seeing it and running into it, because beneath it is is the whole boat."
Abandoned vessels are unpleasant byproducts in a state with more than a million registered boats. Some People leave their junk in the way of others.
"They took it on to buy it, but they just let it become dilapidated and sit out here," Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said last month, promising a crackdown.
Pinellas County has picked up more than 30 abandoned vessels. It’s also crunch time in Hillsborough County.
READ Derelict boat removal to cost Pinellas County $160,000
Earlier this month, mechanical jaws on a county truck destroyed an old 40-foot cabin cruiser that was pulled out of the water near the Williams Park Boat Ramp.
"It’s not an easy process," explained A.J. Matthews of Hillsborough County Marine Safety unit. "It generally takes days of planning."
The junk boat can only be taken after an investigation by law enforcement. In this case, FWC officers supplied the necessary paperwork after their investigation. Junk boats have to be lifted, towed, destroyed and disposed of.
Pinellas County paying $160K to remove derelict boats
Pinellas County officials removing 32 derelict boats that are polluting waterways, but the effort will be costly.
"If we pay a contractor to remove the boat, the individual who last owned that boat is on the hook," Matthews stated.
However, owners can be hard to find when numbers are scraped off or people die or move or an address is just a post office box.
In the end, the thousands of dollars spent to clear abandoned vessels often comes from taxpayers. Most have never owned a boat, but they pay the bill for taking out the trash, the sunken junk, in local waterways.