http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...eb15,0,4462531.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
By David Fleshler
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted February 15 2007
An undersea graveyard of discarded tires dumped off Fort Lauderdale in the early 1970s will start to be dismantled this summer to correct a misguided effort to create the world's biggest artificial reef.
About 1 million to 2 million tires, often strapped together in bundles, were tossed overboard from ships and pleasure boats about 35 years ago to create a fishing reef, a structure that would attract fish for people to catch. But the tires broke free during storms and bounced around to invade real reefs, killing coral, sponges and other marine life.
The debacle left a 34-acre field of tires about a mile from the beach, an undersea eyesore that one environmental official compared to a hazardous waste dump.
Gov. Charlie Crist has proposed spending $2 million to dispose of about 675,000 of the tires. In June, about three dozen Army and Navy divers will test methods for recovering them, such as stringing them necklace-like onto ropes or loading them into nets on the ocean floor.
"It will get the tires off the reef and away from the reef," said Ken Banks, a reef specialist with the Broward County Environmental Protection Department, which will manage the work. "It should allow the reef to come back to life."
Of the tires heaved into the ocean, about 700,000 remain in dense packs between two reefs, the rest having drifted off or washed up on the beach. While some tires that appear to be tied together and stable will be left in place, the state's money will allow most of the rest to be removed.
The military divers will work for free as part of their training. In a similar operation, Army and Navy divers have removed microfilament fishing lines from the floor of Puget Sound.
"It's a large-scale salvage operation," said Will Nuckols, project coordinator for Coastal America, a federal agency that sets up partnerships with other branches of government. "These are the same guys who recover sunken vessels, who recover military assets that have fallen into the ocean."
Accompanying the divers will be an Army transport vessel, called an LCU 2000, that is equipped with a crane. The crane will hoist the tires directly onto cargo containers on the ship. When they're full, the ship will head to Port Everglades, and trucks will haul the tires to recyclers, incinerators or landfills.
When the state first considered recycling, there was concern that the tires would be so encrusted with sand, salt and sea organisms that they would decay and generate odors that would make the tires unsuitable for many uses. But samples collected a few months ago turned out to be not as difficult to deal with as feared, with organisms drying and falling off, rather than decaying and sticking in cracks in the rubber.
Recyclers slice tires into pieces for use as playground surfaces, colored mulch and septic-tank drainage fields. Power plants burn tires to produce electricity.
Jan Rae Clark, environmental manager for the solid waste section of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the recyclingwill cost the state about $3 per tire.
The work this summer will be a pilot project, intended to test methods for removing tires from the seabed. Assuming all goes well, divers will return each summer for the next three years until the 675,000 tires have been hauled up.
David Fleshler can be reached at dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4535.
By David Fleshler
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted February 15 2007
An undersea graveyard of discarded tires dumped off Fort Lauderdale in the early 1970s will start to be dismantled this summer to correct a misguided effort to create the world's biggest artificial reef.
About 1 million to 2 million tires, often strapped together in bundles, were tossed overboard from ships and pleasure boats about 35 years ago to create a fishing reef, a structure that would attract fish for people to catch. But the tires broke free during storms and bounced around to invade real reefs, killing coral, sponges and other marine life.
The debacle left a 34-acre field of tires about a mile from the beach, an undersea eyesore that one environmental official compared to a hazardous waste dump.
Gov. Charlie Crist has proposed spending $2 million to dispose of about 675,000 of the tires. In June, about three dozen Army and Navy divers will test methods for recovering them, such as stringing them necklace-like onto ropes or loading them into nets on the ocean floor.
"It will get the tires off the reef and away from the reef," said Ken Banks, a reef specialist with the Broward County Environmental Protection Department, which will manage the work. "It should allow the reef to come back to life."
Of the tires heaved into the ocean, about 700,000 remain in dense packs between two reefs, the rest having drifted off or washed up on the beach. While some tires that appear to be tied together and stable will be left in place, the state's money will allow most of the rest to be removed.
The military divers will work for free as part of their training. In a similar operation, Army and Navy divers have removed microfilament fishing lines from the floor of Puget Sound.
"It's a large-scale salvage operation," said Will Nuckols, project coordinator for Coastal America, a federal agency that sets up partnerships with other branches of government. "These are the same guys who recover sunken vessels, who recover military assets that have fallen into the ocean."
Accompanying the divers will be an Army transport vessel, called an LCU 2000, that is equipped with a crane. The crane will hoist the tires directly onto cargo containers on the ship. When they're full, the ship will head to Port Everglades, and trucks will haul the tires to recyclers, incinerators or landfills.
When the state first considered recycling, there was concern that the tires would be so encrusted with sand, salt and sea organisms that they would decay and generate odors that would make the tires unsuitable for many uses. But samples collected a few months ago turned out to be not as difficult to deal with as feared, with organisms drying and falling off, rather than decaying and sticking in cracks in the rubber.
Recyclers slice tires into pieces for use as playground surfaces, colored mulch and septic-tank drainage fields. Power plants burn tires to produce electricity.
Jan Rae Clark, environmental manager for the solid waste section of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the recyclingwill cost the state about $3 per tire.
The work this summer will be a pilot project, intended to test methods for removing tires from the seabed. Assuming all goes well, divers will return each summer for the next three years until the 675,000 tires have been hauled up.
David Fleshler can be reached at dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4535.
