Team Removes Japanese Dock from Beach

Byline: Associated Press/Jeff Barnardap AGATE BEACH, ORE. (AP) — It took two tries, but the salvage team disposing of the Japanese dock that washed up on an Oregon beach after last year’s tsunami managed to finish the first cut through the boxcar-size hunk of concrete, Aug. 2. But Oregon Parks and Recreation Department spokesman Chris Havel said the severed section turned out to be too heavy — at 47 tons — for a flatbed trailer to haul it away. So, the section stayed on Agate Beach north of Newport until a bigger trailer was brought in the next day. Havel said biologists looked at the bottom of the severed section and found some invasive species, such as Japanese acorn barnacles, but they were all dead. The crew from Ballard Diving and Salvage of Vancouver, Wash., was cutting the dock into five sections, so the pieces could be hauled to a Portland suburb for disposal. One section was planned to be returned to Newport, to be included in a memorial.             The workers had expected to be done Aug. 2, but they ran into difficulties with a piece of equipment known as a wire saw, which amounts to a cable that runs in a loop...