VALLEJO – In late March, U.S. Rep. John Garamendi held a press conference with union leaders at the Mare Island Dry Docks to promote a bill designed to revitalize the U.S. shipbuilding industry, while highlighting the proposed legislation’s potential to bring middle class jobs to Mare Island.

Garamendi touted the federal legislation, known as the SHIPS for America Act, as an opportunity that could restore shipbuilding to Mare Island and help fill a hole in the economy left empty by the closure of the U.S. Navy’s shipyard nearly 30 years ago. 

The SHIPS Act sets a goal to increase the number of U.S. flagged vessels in international commerce by 250 ships in 10 years. Currently there are only 80 U.S. flagged vessels compared to 5,500 operated by China. The fleet expansion would involve subsidies for domestic construction and repair to facilitate contracts at shipyards across the country. 

The act’s funding structure would create as much as $250 million annually for large shipbuilding projects and $100 million for smaller shipyards and includes a provision to streamline environmental review of shipbuilding projects. 

“American workers in commercial shipyards are essential to supporting our economy and national security,” Garamendi said upon introducing the bill. “This is why I, alongside Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Todd Young, and Representative Trent Kelly, introduced the SHIPS for America Act, representing the most substantial and comprehensive approach to rebuilding America’s shipbuilding industry and empowering American workers.”

If passed, Mare Island, with its existing shipbuilding and repair infrastructure, would be in a position to secure immediate contracts that may result from the legislation. 

Meanwhile, California Forever, a billionaire-backed group that sought to build a new city on 17,500 acres of rural land between Fairfield and Rio Vista last year, is also looking to take advantage of the SHIPS Act. The group has proposed a major shipbuilding hub on a 1,400-acre parcel of the company’s land between the Sacramento River Delta and the base of the Montezuma hills near Collinsville. 

In city and county meetings, residents and officials, including county Supervisor Wanda Williams, questioned whether the Collinsville proposal would compete with Mare Island’s prospects for similar industrial development.

But state Assemblymember Lori Wilson, who formed a stakeholder working group in early April to position the county as a leading candidate for maritime investment, said any comparison of two sites is like “apples to oranges.”

“To meet the demands of modern maritime industry, we need both and more,” Wilson said. “Mare Island and the Montezuma Hills are suited to host entirely different facilities. There is no competition, they are complementary assets within the same regional ecosystem that mutually support each other.”

According to Wilson, the Mare Island Specific Plan would allow for about 50 acres of light industrial development with a height limit of 85 feet while the Collinsville site has 1,400 acres zoned for heavy industry and would likely utilize cranes that are 300 feet tall. She also noted that the EPA recommends a 2,000-foot buffer zone between heavy industry and residential areas, which would not be possible on Mare Island.

Vallejo’s history of shipbuilding

California’ Forever’s proposal and the SHIPS Act have been buoyed by President Donald Trump’s April 9 executive order entitled “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” intended to address economic and national security issues related to China’s advancement in the maritime industry over the last half-century that has far surpassed U.S. capabilities.

According to the executive order, 0.2% of the world's ships are built in the U.S. while 74% are built in China. China is also responsible for building 96% of shipping containers and 86% of ship-to-shore cranes while the U.S. produces none, according to the order.

But while the executive order frames the effort as a “restoration,” U.S. commercial shipbuilding has lagged behind other nations throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

According to a Congressional report, major U.S. production of steel ships was confined to World Wars I and II. By the 1970s, the U.S. produced only 5% of global tonnage, or 15 to 25 ships a year. The U.S. production rate fell to 5 ships per year in the 1980s in part due to President Ronald Reagan’s termination of construction subsidies designed to maintain competitiveness in the global market.

The U.S. industry has basically remained on life support since the 1980s, propped up by the  Jones Act of 1920, which requires ships transporting goods between U.S. ports to be built domestically with some exceptions for various components, according to the Congressional report. 

In Vallejo, the Mare Island Naval Shipyard operated from 1854 to 1996. The base saw a major expansion for World War II, during which time workers built 391 ships, according to the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.

During the Cold War, the shipyard transitioned to building nuclear submarines. Seventeen of the subs were built on the island between 1954 and 1970, when the last ship built on the Island, the USS Drum, was launched. 

One ship repair facility continues operating on Mare Island and could see an influx of business from the renewed interest in shipbuilding. The Mare Island Dry Docks repairs vessels for the Military Sealift Command, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Coast Guard, the Navy and contracts with private owners. 

The company currently operates two of the original Naval Shipyard dry docks and they are repairing a third. The facilities were re-opened as a commercial enterprise in 2011 and the current operator took over in 2013. 

Dry Docks CEO Steven DiLeo said that the yard currently employs 90 to 100 workers plus about 150 contractors, but that’s down from 2-300 employees and 1,200 contractors two years ago. The pandemic created a lot of interest in repairing older vessels because companies were looking to increase the size of their fleets to relieve global supply chain issues, he said.

Maintaining consistent contracts to sustain a larger workforce is an issue and the Dry Docks is looking for ways to grow. For example, the shipyard currently only contracts with the Navy to repair non-combatant vessels, but the company is preparing to certify the yard to work on combatant vessels as well. 

According to DiLeo, a contract to overhaul a combatant vessel requires as many as 400 workers and the project can run for 12 to 18 months. “And we're a union shop, so these are well paid jobs with retirement benefits,” he said.

Although DiLeo acknowledges that large ships like aircraft carriers are not going to be built at the facility, he does not want the capabilities of Mare Island’s working shipyard to be overlooked.

“We are a currently existing shipyard that's in place and built, and commercially certified right now,” Dileo said. “Once these buttons are pushed, and the money becomes available and the Navy wants to come out and build ships or repair ships at Mare Island, it'll happen quickly. I mean, it could happen in six months, if they turn it on.”

One potential challenge for renewed industry on the island is that some Navy land turned over to the city has been developed as housing. But Sheryl McKibben, Senior Vice President of the Mare Island Company, a development group created to develop Mare Island, said that both can coexist.  

“Shipbuilding on the island was set up in a way that aligns with residential and commercial growth and will work synchronously with our development plans,” she said.

“Mare Island has the capacity to build ships, including the destroyer, which is the primary ship used by the Navy.” McKibben said. “In addition to there being ample space available for companies, the already existing buildings were designed and built with the unique purpose of building ships. There is a machine shop, a paint shop, a pipe shop and others that could easily be put back into use for those purposes.”

Synergy in Solano County projects

Trump’s executive order calls for the creation of “maritime prosperity zones,” which are modeled on “opportunity zones” he created in his first term. The opportunity zones were heralded as a way to channel redevelopment funding toward economically disadvantaged areas, but some reports claim that these projects became vehicles for investor profits.

The executive order tasks federal agencies to develop a plan that identifies potential investment sites by July 8.

Solano County Realtors Association President Jenny Castaneda wrote a letter advocating for the maritime prosperity zone designation casting Mare Island as a central hub, the Port of Benicia as a valuable deepwater site and the Collinsville area as a critical long-term growth opportunity for large-scale industrial expansion. 

Meanwhile, the cities of Fairfield, Suisun City and Rio Vista passed resolutions to demonstrate local support for the shipbuilding industry as the county competes with other locations across the country for the maritime prosperity zone designation. 

Solano Economic Development Corporation President Chris Rico said that the resolutions and statements in support of the industry are important because Solano County needs to show unified interest to compete with red states that are often more politically aligned in welcoming development projects. 

“We can compete with enthusiasm,” Rico said. “We can compete in the sense of ‘We want you here, and we'll do everything that we can to help you be here,’ because, not surprisingly, industry wants to go where people want them to be.”

California Forever’s website highlights a 1989 study commissioned by the Solano County Department of Environmental Management which recommends the Collinsville site for the potential development of a heavy industrial marine terminal. The website also provides excerpts of an initial feasibility study stating that the location is ideal for shipbuilding infrastructure.

However, the study also identified a number of constraints at the site, primarily related to access and support infrastructure. The study also noted that the current depth of the channel at 35 feet would need to be dredged to 45 feet in order to be competitive with other deep water ports. 

The Mare Island Dry Docks regularly dredges the channel to their facilities for a depth of 32 feet and maintains berths at a depth of 26 feet. The Port of Benicia offers a 38-foot dockside depth while the Port of Seattle can accommodate ships with a 50-foot draft and some Port of San Diego berths can accommodate a 40-foot draft.

According to the study, the Collinsville site would require construction of an industrial road connecting Highway 12, the reconstruction of the existing rail right of way and other supportive infrastructure such as water supply, sewer, power and flood protection. The 1989 study estimated infrastructure costs at $50 million.

At an April 22 Board of Supervisors meeting, county staff provided an outline of the regulatory process for the Collinsville project. Although the land is zoned for water dependent industrial uses, the approval process would be extensive because development would involve the regulatory roles of multiple federal and state agencies. 

A spokesperson for California Forever said that it is still too early in the process to estimate how long it will take to finance, permit and then build the project.

“California is expensive and it’s slow, so in order for Solano County and the region more broadly to attract shipbuilding here, it will take everyone working together to expedite the construction timelines,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

Some of California Forever’s critics have raised further questions. Duane Kromm, a member of the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee that opposed California Forever’s proposal for a new city, said that he is personally interested to learn more about the environmental impacts to the delta if it turns out that extensive dredging is required to make the channel more navigable for large ships.

Solano Together, a group that formed to oppose California Forever’s East Solano Plan, released a statement on the developer’s shipbuilding proposal in which the group questioned the viability of the project.

“This new proposal is eerily reminiscent of their East Solano Plan, highly aspirational but lacking detail on how it could come to fruition given the extreme regulatory and economic barriers at play,” the group wrote.

“The Collinsville shipbuilding talks are, at best, a distraction, and, at worst, another attempt to waste public resources to build in a remote and isolated location that requires paving over grazing lands, extending public roads and infrastructure, and threatening the health and vibrancy of Solano’s existing cities,” they said.