Subway Car Reef Project Fails Spectacularly

In an ECO FAIL of grand proportions, the project that aimed to recycle used subway cars into habitats for marine life has ultimately resulted in more junk floating around in the ocean. New Jersey paid millions to have the old subway cars shipped from other states and sunk into the ocean off the coast of Delaware, but the stainless steel cars quickly disintegrated.

Only two of the 48 cars that were submerged are still upright and intact. The Press of Atlantic City spoke to Darlene Yuhas, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had estimated they would serve as good reef habitat for 25 to 30 years.

“All the evidence suggested they would be long-lasting. In fact, the EPA data was these cars should last 25 years,” Yuhas said.

Other East Coast states that took the subway cars have reported similar problems.

The state DEP has done more surveys since February and has decided to end the program after cars were only deployed at the Atlantic City Reef and the Cape May Reef, which is about 9.1 nautical miles off Cold Spring Inlet. Cars had been earmarked for three other reefs, including the Shark River, Garden State South and Deepwater reefs, before the termination.

“We did in fact notify the New York Transit Authority that we would no longer be accepting their cars,” Yuhas said.

As Shea Gunther points out over at MNN, we tried something like this before and made a big mess instead of helping marine life. The tires that were dumped into the sea off Florida’s coast in the 1970s to act as an artificial reef broke apart and caused damage to actual living reefs nearby. It’s probably just not a great idea to dump our crap into the oceans, no matter what it’s made out of.

Link [MNN] + [Press of Atlantic City]
Photo credit: NJ.com

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