By Brenna R. Kelly
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FORT WRIGHT - Newport's Riverboat Row may need a new name - Riverboat (and Submarine) Row.
Within two years, a nuclear submarine now sitting in a U.S. Naval graveyard could be docked along Newport's riverfront, U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning said Thursday.
The USS Narwhal is set to become a tool to teach schoolchildren math and science and to provide one more tourist attraction on Kentucky's riverfront.
The submarine is clearly a coup for Northern Kentucky, which has already trumped Cincinnati with an aquarium, Hofbrauhaus and the riverfront entertainment complex Newport on the Levee.
A plan to bring a submarine to Cincinnati suffered a setback in June, when the Navy said the city could not have the decommissioned USS Cincinnati because its class of sub is still in use.
Kentucky landed the decommissioned sub because Bunning, a Southgate Republican, had the transfer of the sub added to a defense appropriations bill. The bill tells the Navy to give the sub to the National Submarine Science Discovery Center, an organization that has been trying to bring a submarine to Newport for more than a year.
"This is not only great news just for Northern Kentucky but for the Commonwealth and I think for the whole region, and that's what's important," Bunning said, surrounded by Northern Kentucky's elected officials at a press conference at his Fort Wright office.
Bunning said he was able to secure the submarine by asking Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the appropriations conference committee, to include the submarine in the bill.
"All he told me was if it's legal we'll do it," Bunning said. "So it must have been legal."
The bill must be approved by Congress before the Navy can gut the sub, remove its nuclear reactor and prepare it to be shipped. The National Submarine Science Discovery Center must also apply for the sub.
The Navy has agreed to pay part of the cost to ship the sub to Kentucky because it would have spent $20 million to scrap it, Bunning said.
The center would also be responsible for part of the cost of shipping the sub on a barge through the Panama Canal, up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to Newport.
"It's going to take a couple of years, at least, to get it done," Bunning said.
"But that's the good news, that gives us a little chance to enhance the project."
The submarine's home is planned just west of the Taylor Southgate Bridge at what is now One Riverboat Row. The site would be transformed into a museum and dock.
The submarine would be the centerpiece of a math and science curriculum designed for fifth-graders.
The curriculum will combine science, math and technology and will end with a simulated search-and-rescue trip on the submarine, said Jack Moreland, Covington school superintendent.
Visitors to the submarine will also be able to trace the history of the sub and the nation's submarine fleet in a museum at the dock site, said Moreland who is also president of the 14-member board of the National Submarine Science Discovery Center.
The board will now begin raising money for the project. No specific amount that will be sought has been announced, but board members said it could be a mix of private donations and federal funds.
Moreland was in Washington State last week and toured the three-level submarine.
"It's amazing," he said. "It's bigger than you think and smaller than you think all at the same time."
On Thursday, Tom Schram, executive director of the National Submarine Science Discovery Center, was in Washington state inspecting the sub.
But Joseph Jaap, a Cincinnati lawyer and former Navy officer who founded the group trying to get the USS Cincinnati, said Northern Kentucky officials shouldn't count their submarines before they surface.
"The folks in Newport aren't any closer to getting a submarine today than they were yesterday," Jaap said.
The language in the Defense Department authorization bill, Jaap said, means only that the USS Narwhal is set aside for it.
"It doesn't mean the Navy is required to make the donation," Jaap said. "They still have to go through the application process; the nuclear reactor has to be removed and the Navy has to decide it wants to let loose a nuclear submarine, which it has never done before. It's far from a done deal."
Jaap said his organization will continue to try to convince the Navy to donate the USS Cincinnati, which, Jaap said, could end up on either side of the Ohio River.
"I'd be happy as punch to have the Narwhal here," he said, "but our preference is the USS Cincinnati."
Howard Wilkinson contributed to this story.
E-mail bkelly@enquirer.com
