FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (AP) -- Divers began removing up to 2 million old tires from the ocean floor after a plan in the 1970s to create the world's largest artificial tire reef became an ecological disaster.
The well-intentioned idea was to create new marine habitat and alternate dive sites. The plan also served to dispose of tires that were clogging landfills. But little sea life formed on the tires dumped about a mile offshore in 1972. Some of the bundles bound together with nylon and steel have broken loose and are scouring the ocean floor and washing up on beaches. Others are wedging up against the nearby natural reef, blocking coral growth and devastating marine life.
U.S. Army and Navy salvage divers, as part of their annual training exercises, began removing the tires, said William Nuckols, coordinator for Coastal America, a federal government group involved in organizing the cleanup. The tires will be trucked to a Georgia facility where they will ! be burned to create energy to power a paper recycling plant, he said.
More on the project can be found at
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/tires/pages/osbornepilot.htm
Topic: Divers dismantle artificial tire reef (Read 2715 times)