July 10, 2007
Two-million tires is by any measure a lot of tires. They would have once rolled under as many as 500,000 automobiles. If you can get a sense of how many tires two-million tires actually is, they try to imagine them all scattered across the sea floor off the coast of Florida. It's not a pretty picture. But that's how many tires were dumped into the warm coastal waters near Fort Lauderdale twenty years ago in an effort to encourage reef expansion.
The intent had been good—to establish an artificial reef near existing natural reefs where it might encourage the expansion of delicate reef habitat. But in retrospect, the tire dumping has not been the conservation success story once hoped for. Instead, it has turned into an environmental fiasco.
The artificial reef, called Osborne Reef, never took hold—no coral grew on the layer of tires that blanketed the sea floor. The tires were originally tied together into clusters but the clusters soon broke apart during strong storms and hurricanes. Once free, the tires crashed into nearby natural reefs, destroying the very habitat they were intended to enhance. Those that didn't bombard natural reefs spread out over the sea floor to cover an area of more than 34 acres.
Until recently, fixing the problem seemed too costly to consider. It was estimated that it would cost $30 million to hire private contractors to remove the tires, a sum far out of the reach of county and state organizations.
Fortuantely, Coastal America, an organization whose job is to bring together federal agencies to perform large marine projects, is coordinating an unique effort to remove the tires. Coastal America is working with Navy and Coast Guard divers who are now removing the tires as part of a training exercise. This reduces the cost of the cleanup from $30 million to $2 million.
Divers extract about 1,000 tires from Osborne Reef each day and are expected to continue doing so for the next three to five years. Their goal is to remove about 700,000 of the two-million tires from the reef. Once removed, the tires are recycled.
