Disposal contract awarded for Athabaskan

Sailors line the bow of HMCS Athabaskan during the ship’s paying off ceremony on March 10, 2017. Photo by FIS Halifax

Sailors line the bow of HMCS Athabaskan during the ship’s paying off ceremony on March 10, 2017. Photo by FIS Halifax

Ryan Melanson, Trident Newspaper ~

A contract has been awarded for disposal work on the former HMCS Athabaskan, which means the ship will soon be towed from HMC Dockyard to the Marine Recycling Corporation facilities in Sydney, Nova Scotia, to be dismantled.

Public Services and Procurement Canada announced the contract, worth $5.7 million, on Jan.18. Though Marine Recycling Corporation is headquartered in Port Colborne, Ontario, the entirety of the work, including demilitarization of equipment, remediation of hazardous waste, and recycling of any remaining materials, will take place at the company’s Cape Breton site.

The dismantling is expected to be completed by summer 2019.

HMCS Athabaskan was the last of the Royal Canadian Navy’s four Iroquois-class destroyers in service when it was officially paid off in March 2017. The ships were constructed in the 1970s with highly advanced technologies at the time, including new sonar and infrared technologies and the ability to launch two maritime helicopters at once. Notable deployments for the ship included Operation Friction in 1991 during the Gulf War, as well as relief work in the United States following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and in Haiti after the country’s devastating Earthquake in 2010.

The lack of destroyers in the fleet has created a temporary capability gap for the navy, but it will be restored with the construction of 15 Canadian Surface Combatants, with the first expected to be delivered in the mid-2020s.

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