Bright Idea of Tire Reef Now Simply a Blight --WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/01/AR2006100101090.html?referrer=email

Bright Idea of Tire Reef Now Simply a Blight
Officials Plan Recovery Off Florida Coast

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 2, 2006; A12



FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Now the idea seems daft. But in the spring of 1972, the dumping of a million or so tires offshore here looked like ecological enlightenment. From the scrap tires, artificial reefs would grow and fish would throng, or so it was thought. A flotilla of more than 100 private boats with volunteers turned out to help. A Goodyear blimp christened the site by dropping a gold-painted tire. What happened instead is a vast underwater dump -- a spectacular disaster spawned from good intentions. Today there are no reefs, no fishy throngs, just a lifeless underwater gloom of haphazardly dropped tires stretching across 35 acres of ocean bottom.

It's not just a matter of botched scenery. Because they can roll around, the tires are pounding against natural reefs nearby.

So, after years in which the site was studied and then neglected, officials here are planning to clean up the environmental experiment gone awry. Coastal America, a partnership of federal agencies, state and local governments and private groups, is trying to organize a cleanup using military salvage teams that would use the tire retrieval as a training exercise. Once the divers pulled the tires up, they would be disposed of by the state at a cost of about $3 million to $5 million.
The scale of the project -- some say there are as many as 2 million tires below -- and the number of different specialties required had prevented previous bureaucratic efforts from going forward.
With each dive team retrieving about 700 tires a week, officials estimate that the effort would take three years. They plan to begin in 2008.

A tire reef had seemed to work in New England, he said, and organizers figured it would work here.
The project had received a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers and had active support from Broward County, officials said. Today, most states have restricted or banned tires in artificial reefs, according to a 2004 joint publication of the Gulf and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

In retrospect, McAllister said, "it was a terrible mistake and I hate to admit it. . . . The conventional wisdom, or whatever you want to call it, was not such a bright idea."

[riverwalker]

1. frightening

This is sort of related, but I am a landlocked Minnesota girl, used to pretty clean water and lakes. I returned last week from a trip to Sanibel Island, Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. I am still recovering from getting sick from swimming in the toxic soup that is the Gulf. The Red Tide had me coughing and hacking, piles of dead fish washed up daily and the resort would send 4 wheelers out in the dead of night to secretly clean up the bloated fish and critters off the beaches (I saw them). Then I learned (after the fact) that there were health department advisories against swimming due to enterococcus bacteria in the water. I have never been so sick in my life, all from a few days on the ocean. It was a wake up call to me, I had no idea the state of our oceans was so bad. Literally cesspools.:cry:

[Demeter]

2. You Ought To Sue

The resort, and the state of Florida, for concealing a public health hazard. Class action, maybe.
Put Jebbie's knickers in a twist, just in time for elections!

[polemic_realism]

3. I live on the Gulf....

red tide is a nasty fact of life, but it only occurs sporadically. Just to calm your fears, today the water where I live is immaculate, a shimmering oasis. I check the paper weekly to see the water quality reports for the different areas. There are always one or two areas that are consistently problematic. I think this is due to poor runoff management or water from the bay that is coming back through. But this is a small fraction. I have lived here for overa year, and while there are times to stay out of the water (red tide, jellyfish, seaweed), I have never been sickened.

It's not all bad I can assure you, or else the millionaires would have long ago departed.

[ixion]

4. I live on the Gulf, too

and if by 'sporadic' you mean lasting for months on end, then yeah, I would say so.

The current red tide begin in August, and has not let up since. I haven't been able to swim for as many months.

Swimming in red tide does cause throat and sinus problems, from my experience.