When you picture a climate or pollution story, a grey World War I battleship probably is not the first image that comes to mind. Yet the long, messy rescue of Battleship Texas in Galveston is quietly becoming one of the most unusual environmental projects on the U.S. Gulf Coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For years, the aging hull of the ship leaked so badly that crews had to pump about 300,000 gallons of water<\/a> out of the vessel every single day, just to keep it afloat in the Houston Ship Channel. Officials warned that if nothing changed, the corroding steel could contaminate the busy waterway, which sits across from one of the world\u2019s largest petrochemical complexes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2012, when a major leak flooded internal spaces, workers even floated an oil boom around the ship to catch any fuel or oily water that might escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At that point, the question was no longer only about saving a historic warship. It was also about what to do with a 27,000-ton steel artifact that had become a slow-moving environmental risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n