Video from NewsChopper4 shows a group of impounded boats on the water in Marina del Rey. Many more have been left tied up in the marinas. Why can’t they be pulled out?<\/p>\n
All of the boats were impounded by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. People say it’s not just frustrating but also a public safety issue and that something needs to be done.<\/p>\n
“It almost looks like a Disneyland ride,” said Sean McCarthy, who runs the boating and lifestyle brand Catalina Crew. “There’s two sunken vessels, and they’re all piled up on top of each other. But it’s no fault to the county or the sheriff’s. They just don’t have anywhere to put them.”<\/p>\n
There’s at least 100 abandoned boats on the water in Marina del Rey, and many of them are still tied up in their slip, according to McCarthy.<\/p>\n
“A lot of them are just left in complete derelict shape, like you’ll see on the inside of this,” McCarthy said. “It’s uninhabitable.”<\/p>\n
McCarthy said abandoned boats don’t just hurt marinas but the county too, as the owners no longer pay taxes for registration or slip fees. Additionally, if the boats end up sinking, they can release chemicals and trash into the environment.<\/p>\n
“No tax money. No money to the slip,” he said. “And it’s just an eyesore, and a safety issue, environmental hazard, the list goes on.”<\/p>\n
NBCLA reached out to the sheriff’s department to ask why the county isn’t removing all the boats from the water. In a statement, LASD Harbor Master Sgt. Tim Gannon said the following:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe maintain a waterborne impound location for abandoned, surrendered and impounded vessels awaiting disposition. Our primary funding source for vessel disposal is the annually requested Surrendered and Abandoned Vessel Exchange (SAVE) Grant. Current challenges, including limitations in vendor availability, noting that only one vendor is presently authorized. Limitation is due to language in the Master Agreement, which restricts approved vendors to two designated haul-out locations within Marina del Rey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years ago, the county was awarded $80,000 in that grant program, but this last year, the funding dropped to $44,000.<\/p>\n
“It’s 10,000 to 40 to 50,000 depending on size to get rid of a boat, so we’re trying to come up with creative ways to help the community get rid of these vessels,” McCarthy said.<\/p>\n
McCarthy said his nonprofit Catalina Crew Foundation is now raising money to remove abandoned boats from the water, hoping to find other uses for abandoned boat hulls, like fiberglass and construction equipment.<\/p>\n
“If we start getting after this, we can get rid of these boats in a real quick amount of time,” McCarthy said. “It’s just making people aware, making them understand we’re here to help.”<\/p>\n
His group has been able to remove at least 10 boats from the water in Marina del Rey, but the sheriff’s department estimates 30 boats a year are being abandoned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Video from NewsChopper4 shows a group of impounded boats on the water in Marina del Rey. Many more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,50425],"class_list":["post-460269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-marina-del-rey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}