Two World War II cargo ships moored among Benicia's fabled "ghost fleet" since the late 1940s will be towed out of Suisun Bay next month, scrubbed clean in dry dock and ultimately sent to Texas to be broken up and sold for scrap.

The move will kick off a new federal effort to dispose of the hulking ships that are leaching toxic paint and other chemicals into the waterway.

The initiative, announced Thursday in Benicia by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation John Porcari, marked a thawing of relations between federal officials and state water quality regulators involved in a long-running dispute over the maintenance and dismantling of the fleet, which numbers 72 ships.

Under the plan, the federal government will hire outside contractors to remove fuel from the ships' tanks, scour invasive species from hulls, and blast away peeling paint and metals. The work - which will single out 25 of the worst offenders - will occur in dry dock, initially in San Francisco.

Three-year wait

That pleased San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board officials, who for the last three years argued that the Bush administration's push to clean the ships in Suisun Bay would have further contaminated the waterway and imperiled important fish populations.

"This is the beginning of a very long process, but it's a fantastic start," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the water board.

Last year, Wolfe's agency joined three environmental groups in suing the U.S. Maritime Administration for violating the federal Clean Water Act. The lawsuit alleges the decaying ships have dumped asbestos, used oil and as much as 19 tons of mercury, lead and copper into Suisun Bay.

Maritime officials said at the time they were caught in a dilemma: U.S. Coast Guard codes required the ships be stripped of invasive species before moving out into the Pacific Ocean, and the regional water board said moving the rotting ships would release more noxious chemicals into the water.

Millions in costs

While the dry dock work will add millions to the costs to clean the ships, Porcari said President Obama is committed to recycling the behemoths and restoring water quality to the site of the largest "mothball fleet" in the nation.

"We take this issue very seriously, and we won't rest until it's rectified," Porcari said.

The road is likely to be long and costly, given the dearth of dry dock and disposal centers nationwide and lower steel prices. Federal officials said that during the days of high-flying steel prices, recycling companies would pay to cut the ships apart for the valuable metal they contained. With the reversal in the economy, the government instead is paying a Brownsville, Texas, firm more than $2 million to recycle the first two ships.

The Suisun Bay mothball fleet - which is arranged in clumps across a 4.5-nautical-mile stretch of Suisun Bay visible from Highway 680 - dates to the late 1940s. After the end of World War II, the U.S. Maritime Commission anchored thousands of cargo ships, tankers and battleships at sites around the United States where they could be preserved until needed for further military or civilian operations. At its peak around 1960, the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet held more than 350 ships.

Ships move around

In the decades since, ships have been added and removed from the fleet. Within the past month, one ship left Suisun Bay for Galveston, Texas, where it is being used for training by the Texas Maritime Academy. The other two remaining reserve fleets, located in Texas and Virginia, contain about 70 ships total.

The first two ships scheduled for recycling are the Pan American Victory and the Earlham Victory, both World War II cargo ships built by Permanente Metals in 1945 in nearby Richmond.

While many of the defunct ships will be sold off and melted down, maritime enthusiasts hope to preserve the fleet's most famous vessel. The battleship Iowa - which shuttled President Franklin Roosevelt to important talks in Tehran during World War II - may become a floating museum similar to the battleship Missouri museum in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Whether the ships find new homes or their parts find new uses through recycling, Wolfe said his agency will fight to eliminate all ships from Suisun Bay.

"We know it's not going to happen overnight, but we support getting all the ships out of here," he said.