Orlando utility makes donation to sink ship
200 tons of concrete used to eliminate old cocaine freighter
Orlando’s electricity provider recently helped sink a cocaine freighter with old concrete.
The scuttling occurred a little more than a week ago off the Treasure Coast, where a flotilla of pleasure boaters surrounded a spectacle made possible by a small mountain of concrete that Orlando Utilities Commission had to dump somewhere.
The cargo ship with a bilge full of concrete is now sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean east of Port St. Lucie in about 100 feet of water as an artificial reef and destination for divers.
“It’s pretty impressive to be able to sink a 180-foot ship full of concrete and have it end up where it supposed to be,” said Terry Torrens, OUC’s senior legislative representative.
The backstory for how it got there is a bit tangled.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency seized the 180-foot, half-century-old freighter Voici Bernadette in 2016 for carting around bricks of cocaine.
A year ago, the agency handed off the ship to St. Lucie County for its inventory of artificial reefs, which are common along Florida’s coast.
With a donation from the Coastal Conservation Association, the vessel was stripped of fuel and chemicals, wires, motors and hazards to divers, such as handrails.
Then OUC got involved. The utility had purchased a 20-acre site for an expansion in St. Cloud, whose residents are customers of OUC.
The land had a former concrete plant on it, along with 1,000 tons of waste concrete in the form of 3-ton blocks.
Torrens said the utility searched for a way to reuse the blocks, rather than hauling them to a landfill.
That led to connecting with the Coastal Conservation Associ
ation, which led to the Voici Bernadette.
Concrete is typically used as ballast to help intentionally sink ships — those slated to become reefs — straight down in an upright fashion and to hold them in place.
OUC drivers carted 78 concrete blocks weighing a combined 200 tons to the port at the Fort Pierce Inlet.
The hauling cost of $1,150 for fuel “was a less expensive option than taking it to the landfill,” Torrens said.
The blocks were lowered into the bottom of the freighter, which was towed to sea for its burial.
“You can see on the video how the ship begins to list and there is really neat video from GoPros where you can see water coming into the helm station,” Torrens said. “It’s actually really beautiful blue water so the visual is pretty amazing.”