Eco fail: Subway car reef project disintegrates
An ambitious project to create a marine habitat out of retired subway cars is canceled after most of the cars fall apart.
Wed, Jul 22 2009 at 3:11 PM EST
Photo: Eeemart/Flickr Gee, who could have possibly foreseen this?
A program that dumped old subway cars into the ocean to provide habitat for marine life has been deemed a total and utter failure after officials found that most of the cars have disintegrated.
New Jersey has suspended the program in the face of these poor results. Delaware has reportedly found better success with their cars because they used older cars made from steel instead of the stainless steel used in the newer cars.
I can understand the appeal of programs like this -- we get to dump waste while portraying it as an environmental initiative. What politician in her right mind wouldn't want to sign on to something that's going to save money and look green?
We've tried this before. They dumped a couple of million old tires into the sea off Florida's coast in the '70s only to watch the tires break away and wreck havoc on the sea floor. Tires started washing up on shore and caused damage to actual reefs when currents pushed them around.
Dumping our crap into the sea to give fish a place to live is just dumb. We continue to prove amazingly adept at screwing up our oceans.
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Comments
dottECO
07/23/2009 09:16 AM
It sounded like a good idea! Be happy that it did not happen. Some years ago the state of florida had this fantastic idea that they would create a reef of used tires to create an underwater paradise. It failed miserably! Chemicals from the tires leached into the water and it became a dead zone. How come organizations do not look at other's past mistakes and learn from them? DOH!
