A pipe with “approximately 30 percent asbestos,” considered a high amount, was also found, and an employee told the assessors that more pipes existed.

No health problems have been documented, but the Park Service, which requested the tests as part of departmental policy, noted that more tests were needed. The public was never alerted, and the follow-up tests never happened.

Caitlin Klevorick, a CBI Acquisitions spokeswoman, said by email that the company believed that if any potential environmental problems exist, they resulted before CBI Acquisitions became landholders.

“Caneel Bay was fully committed to and did operate the resort to ensure guests’ safety,” she said.

Michael Litterst, acting chief of public affairs for the Park Service, declined to be interviewed, noting “both pending legislation and potential litigation.”

But Stephanie Roulett, a Park Service spokeswoman, said by email that the agency had tried to get on the property multiple times and had not been granted access. She said that while they could implement a “legal procedure,” they had “thus-far not significantly pushed back.”

A series of letters between Mr. Engle and the Park Service, obtained by The Times, illustrates negotiations at loggerheads.

In April 2019, Mr. Engle sent the Interior department a letter claiming the right to “immediately and automatically” take over the property unless the government paid $70 million and assured indemnification “from all environmental liabilities.”

The agency rejected Mr. Engle’s ultimatum, repeating a request for additional environmental testing.

Ms. Klevorick, the resort spokeswoman, said the company is “committed to further cooperation with the NPS in the next phase of an environmental site investigation.”

The storm before the storms

Even before the hurricanes forced the resort to shut down, some longtime employees had become increasingly frustrated.

Ms. Germain, the housekeeper and local union representative, said when she started working at the resort in the 1980s, staffers had a sense of pride but that diminished under new management.

“As time passed it got a dose of bad management,” she said. “They treated us really poorly — really bad down to the last.”

Employees who had been full-time said that their hours declined in favor of seasonal workers. (Ms. Klevorick said that CBI Acquisitions “always prioritized” full-time employees over seasonal workers.) Management also instituted a security policy in which it checked employees’ bags before they left the resort each day.

Sheryl Parris, who has been president of the local union representing Caneel Bay since 2012, said that the “very insensitive” practices evoked hard feelings.

Caneel also attempted to reduce its full-time staff, successfully negotiating in April 2017 with the Economic Development Commission to decrease the minimum number of employees with full-time status to 230, a reduction of almost 100 people.

Additionally, despite continuing to collect local tax breaks — including a 90 percent income tax exemption and full exemptions from other taxes — the resort did not actually employ most of their workers year-round. All but a few dozen were let go each year for a six-to-eight week hurricane season closure, beginning in 2009.

Other resorts on nearby islands have also implemented such closures, but previous owners of Caneel Bay had never done seasonal layoffs. At a public hearing the day the work force agreement was announced, one commission member expressed reservations about the habitual layoffs but the resort continued the practice.

‘I want to do the right thing’

Months after the storms, and with the resort moldering on site, Stacey E. Plaskett, the U.S.V.I. delegate in Congress, introduced a new bill allowing a 60-year extension on the R.U.E. to coax the owners to rebuild. Missing from the bill’s text: any mention of required environmental testing.

Some resort staff and the greater St. John community felt excluded from the process and the bill was not well-received, particularly by some former employees who say they still never received paychecks for their last two weeks of work. Ms. Klevorick said the company was unaware of any employees who had not received payment “but recognizes that immediately following the storms it was very chaotic.”

As Ms. Plaskett’s approval rating plummeted on St. John, her working relationship with Mr. Engle also deteriorated; he appeared uninterested in working with the community, she said.

Mr. Engle acknowledged community frustration.

“Maybe when I was down there I didn’t handle it as well as I could have,” he said. “I want to do the right thing for the employees, I want to do the right thing for the community and the Virgin Islands.”

Then, about a year after the storms, Mr. Engle invited former employees and others onto the resort property for a meeting. Several people there recalled him framing the rebuild as contingent on the bill’s passage. Ms. Parris recalled employees offering to return and clean up, but instead, she said of the company: “They were waiting for that bill and so they kept all the employees waiting.”

The bill died. Ms. Plaskett said she has no plans to introduce new legislation.

Negotiations between CBI Acquisitions and the Park Service are ongoing. Last month, the company submitted a proposal to the service, and Ms. Roulett said earlier this month that the agency was currently drafting its own.

‘$60 and you’re doing good’

The loss of tourism has had lasting effects on bars and restaurants, as well as cabdrivers, who made the bulk of their money taking guests to and from dinner to places like ZoZo’s at The Sugar Mill, an Italian restaurant once located at Caneel.

“Before, everybody was making something,” recalled Everett Wilkinson, one cabdriver. “Now everyone is hustling for whatever they can make. It’s why most people on the island have two or three jobs — just to survive.”

Previously, he often brought in $200 a day. Now, “$60 and you’re doing good,” he said. “The taxi service right now is down to nothing. We’re sitting right by the dock, and we’re not moving.”

Although Mr. Engle insists that the rebuild has been stalled by uncertainty about what will happen to the property in 2023, court documents filed by certain underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, suggest that the company was “grossly underinsured.”

So far the company has received $32 million for a claim of total devastation following Hurricane Irma — although the resort’s insurable value was more than twice that.

Mr. Engle said that the groups are currently arbitrating the company’s claim for a separate payout for Hurricane Maria, saying that the damage incurred by the second storm was distinct from the first — a claim the insurance company has contested. Arbitration is scheduled for April.

Around the time that he was promoting Ms. Plaskett’s bill to former employees in 2018, Mr. Engle said in an interview with a local reporter that he was in a position of power with an insurance payout that did not require him to rebuild.

“I could take that money and walk away, or I can take that money and reinvest and maybe put up a little more capital and turn this into something special,” Mr. Engle said. “Without Caneel Bay, St. John is going to implode.”

Recalling that interview, Mr. Engle said that “as a matter of economic fact” the resort brought thousands of visitors to St. John and that “the amount of money that was spent by Caneel guests both at the resort and in the shops and the restaurants in Cruz Bay was very significant for an island with several thousand people.”

“I was basically stating the obvious,” he concluded.

‘We didn’t have hurricanes like this’

How the shortened flight impacts the Starliner plan and NASA’s plans to resume launching of astronauts on American rockets from American soil is not nonetheless known.

Diagnosing and fixing the clock problem could insert delays to the business crew program, NASA’s method of relying on non-public businesses to develop spacecraft to have astronauts to and from the area station. It is currently much more than two a long time behind its primary timeline.

Jim Chilton, senior vice president of the area and start division at Boeing, approximated that the mission attained adequate details to satisfy 85 to 90 p.c of the test aims.

“The vessel seems to be wonderful,” Mr. Chilton explained. “They’re telling us there is barely any charring, beautifully level on her airbags. And that bodes actually properly for reusability.”

The Starliner capsule will be transported again to Kennedy Place Middle in Florida, exactly where it will be refurbished. Each capsule is intended to fly up to 10 instances, and this one particular is at present scheduled to head to room once again, this time with astronauts, in the second half of 2020.

Before then, Boeing is to fly yet another exam flight, but with astronauts aboard.

Steve Stich, deputy supervisor of the industrial crew system for NASA, said teams from the agency and Boeing will invest months analyzing the data.

“To me, there’s excellent details out there that suggests that after we go via it, perhaps it’s suitable to go, future move, fly the crewed flight examination,” Mr. Stich claimed. “But we have to go by means of the details to start with.”

Mr. Chilton agreed that it was way too early to say regardless of whether the subsequent Starliner flight will have astronauts aboard. “We’re not in posture to suggest that and we really don’t propose it till we know the equipment is worthy,” he mentioned.

About 50 percent an hour prior to landing, thrusters fired for 55 seconds to fall the spacecraft out of orbit. That established off an automatic choreography — jettisoning pieces no extended wanted, deploying parachutes, inflating the airbags — that appeared to unfold flawlessly. The capsule touched down in the freezing desert ahead of sunrise in the vicinity of a former space shuttle runway.

“She considered she was later in the mission,” Mr. Chilton mentioned on Saturday, “and staying autonomous, commenced to behave that way.”

Boeing does not know what went improper.

“If I understood, it would not have happened” Mr. Chilton explained. “We were stunned.”

The spacecraft’s computer software set its clock primarily based on the time it acquired from the Atlas 5 rocket before launch, and it is still also early to notify how it pulled the incorrect information, reported Mr. Chilton. He added that the issue was with the Boeing software package, not with the rocket, which was crafted and operated by a further business, the United Launch Alliance.

This flight did not have any person on board, but NASA and Boeing officers insist that if astronauts experienced been in the capsule, they would have been secure. The astronauts might even have been able to take above handbook handle and send out the spacecraft on the proper path.

Flight controllers ended up finally in a position to mail Starliner the suitable time. They then carried out a pair of thruster firings to increase its orbit to a circular a person 155 miles earlier mentioned the surface area. That was decreased than the Intercontinental Area Station, which is at an altitude of about 250 miles.

In the course of its abbreviated time in orbit, the spacecraft’s propulsion, navigation and life assist methods appeared to function nicely. Even even though the Starliner did not go to the area station, flight controllers were being capable to take a look at some of the techniques essential to the rendezvous. That integrated establishing a conversation link concerning the spacecraft and station and extending, then retracting a ring that would have hooked up to the docking port.

The two portions of the mission of finest threat to astronauts — launch and return to Earth — have been demonstrated.

NASA however hopes to have astronauts to orbit once more in the very first half of 2020, and has also employed another firm, SpaceX, to get crews to the place station.

The trouble with Boeing’s Starliner does not right have an impact on SpaceX’s capsule, Crew Dragon, which concluded its very first trip to and from the place station in March. But SpaceX has encountered its individual hurdles and delays, and continue to has to finish tests of its parachute and perform an in-flight take a look at of its abort procedure, prior to it is ready to have astronauts. That launch is at present scheduled for Jan. 11.

NASA has already talked to Russia about obtaining further seats on the Soyuz rockets, which have been the only transportation offered to astronauts to and from the International Space Station since 2011.