A brand new stress marketing campaign argues the county is about at hand America’s adversaries a propaganda present — and {that a} face-saving exit nonetheless exists.
FORT WALTON BEACH — Okaloosa County commissioners thought they’d a winner: sink a well-known outdated ship, rebrand it because the “world’s largest synthetic reef,” and experience the tourism buzz. What they might not have anticipated is that the ship they selected occurs to be a Nationwide Register-listed Historic Property named the “United States” — and that sinking it, in the course of a battle with Iran, in the course of the nation’s 250th anniversary, may not play as effectively outdoors Okaloosa because it does inside county chambers.
That’s the argument being pressed this week by the US Maritime Patriots Alliance, a newly launched advocacy marketing campaign that launched a 90-second social media advert focusing on all 5 commissioners by title and picture — twice — and framing the choice as a looming nationwide embarrassment. The advert consists of the commissioners’ public photographs and call info, and closes with a direct name to motion: Rethink the Sink.
The marketing campaign is the general public face of the SS United States Preservation Basis, Inc., a Florida nonprofit that has spent the final two years combating to avoid wasting America’s final and largest ocean liner from extinction. Whereas the Basis’s ongoing efforts concentrate on authorized and regulatory channels, this one is aimed squarely on the voters who elected the 5 commissioners, shifting the plan ahead.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF COUNTY
The argument isn’t aimed toward environmentalists or historic preservationists — it’s aimed on the sort of voter who is aware of what America’s Service provider Marine did in World Battle II and doesn’t want it defined.
The SS United States is the symbolic flagship of that United States Service provider Marine — the quickest ocean liner ever constructed, designed beneath a categorized Navy contract to hold a complete Military division throughout the Atlantic in 72 hours if battle got here. She is the one vessel in American historical past to bear the title of the nation on her bow with out prefix or qualifier. She nonetheless holds the transatlantic velocity file she set in 1952.
County commissioners authorised the acquisition and reef plan earlier than the battle with Iran reshaped the information surroundings. The Alliance’s warning to the county commissioners is that the world has modified sufficient to justify a re-assessment — and that reconsidering is the patriotic selection, not a retreat.
ERIN BROCKOVICH AND THE TOXIC REEF
Past the symbolism, the marketing campaign can also be highlighting rising issues about what would find yourself on the backside of the Gulf of America. EPA-certified laboratory testing has confirmed hexavalent chromium within the ship’s Chilly Battle-era coatings at ranges that researchers have described as catastrophic — a legacy of zinc chromate primer techniques now banned beneath federal regulation. Dr. Todd Osborne of the College of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience has warned the vessel may turn into a “poisonous reef” and create a “Superfund web site” if submerged.
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich, whose title turned synonymous with hexavalent chromium contamination after her landmark case in opposition to Pacific Fuel and Electrical, has additionally weighed in on the environmental risks posed by sinking the vessel — including a nationally acknowledged voice to issues that county officers have largely waved off.
In a February 18 Fb put up concerning the SS United States, Brockovich warned county commissioners, “Clear your ship up earlier than you sink her… or be silly, do it, hurt hundreds, and spend a whole lot of thousands and thousands cleansing up your crap for the following twenty years.”
The proposed reef web site sits 180 ft under the floor, 20 miles offshore, with no civilian hyperbaric chamber inside survivability vary — a element that Commissioner Mixon has publicly acknowledged. Each diving emergency at that depth turns into a U.S. Coast Guard search-and-rescue operation.
THE OFF-RAMP
The marketing campaign is cautious to supply commissioners a approach out that doesn’t require them to confess a mistake. The Basis has been pushing a proposal known as Operation Liberty Shift, beneath which the U.S. Maritime Administration would supply a number of SL-7 Quick Sealift Ships — already slated for decommissioning, all-steel, freed from historic significance and poisonous coatings — in its place reef candidate. At roughly 946 ft, an SL-7 would nonetheless give Okaloosa the title of world’s largest synthetic reef.
“For WWII veterans and service provider mariners who constructed and served on the SS United States, that is sacred maritime heritage,” stated Carlos Camacho Jr., co-founder and chief communications officer of the Basis. “For Okaloosa County, it’s a vacationer attraction. There are different ships accessible proper now that may be scuttled — ships with out the historical past, the toxins, or the political fallout that sinking the US would unleash in the course of the nation’s 250th anniversary. The selection appears apparent.”
The Basis has briefed the U.S. Division of Transportation, submitted supplies to the Division of the Inside, and drawn help from members of Congress. The U.S. Military Corps of Engineers has formally decided that the sinking would represent an hostile impact to a Nationwide Register-listed historic property. A Part 106 overview beneath the Nationwide Historic Preservation Act stays lively and incomplete, as does a required overview beneath the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act. The Basis stays a federally acknowledged consulting social gathering within the ongoing overview.
THE CLOCK
The county’s timeline has the sinking scheduled for this spring, leaving the Alliance a slender window. The marketing campaign is constructed round velocity: get the advert into social media circulation, generate earned media consideration, and create sufficient political noise that at the very least one or two commissioners rethink earlier than the choice turns into irreversible.
For now, the battle has come residence to 5 county commissioners and the voters who put them there. The query the Alliance is asking — loudly, and in paid media — is whether or not these commissioners are ready to defend their choice on a nationwide stage for all of America to see.
Okaloosa has by no means had a scarcity of patriotic pleasure. The marketing campaign is betting that pleasure cuts each methods.
