SEATTLE — The Washington State Ferries system is trying to fix a nine-year-old mistake and sell off nine unused generators through public auction.
The custom-built generators, which were ordered at a cost of about $5.3 million in 2006, are up for sale at a starting bid of $300,000 for all nine.
As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, no one had entered a bid.
Ferries officials intended for the generators to make the ferry Kaleetan and ferry Yakima more fuel efficient. They were also expected to reduce maintenance costs.
But then officials discovered the equipment simply didn’t work on the ferries.
“Whose job is it to make sure that that is going to work?” ferry passenger Shauna Erdmann wondered. “You can’t just buy something and hope it works.”
KIRO 7 took that question to spokesperson Ian Sterling, who said that engineers were trying to make 1960s ferry technology work with modern equipment.
“Was it mis-engineered?” he said. “Obviously, there were a bunch of mistakes made here over time that led up to these not being able to be used.”
The state tried an auction before in 2013, but bidders never reached the reserve price, a sum Sterling said he did not know.
He said it appears there is a very small market for old generators, especially since these were custom-built.
“Maybe there's a fishing vessel out there that can use it,” he said. “Maybe there's a mining company that can use it. More than likely at this point, they'll go to be recycled.”
WSF said the generators continue to rack up costs: The ferry system is paying $3500 a month to store all of them.
Washington State Ferries also spent additional money on some change orders for the generators and paid for studies to see if the problematic equipment could somehow be used.
Figuring in all those costs, Sterling said the total price tag for the never-been-used generators is now at $5.9 million and growing.
KIRO
