Sleeping with the Fishes

PenguinRadio writes: "I know it's not about Linux or Msoft or anything else techie related, but the photo of a big red NYC subway car being pushed into the ocean was cool enough that I thought I should send it in to slashdot. Take a look at the BBC's story on how an artificial reef is being created out of old red subway cars. As they said in the godfather "he sleeps with the fishes."" Note that it's more for economic reasons than concern for the poor ocean critters.

Comments

scrap?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Heck, why don't they just pay a scrap dealer to haul the cars away, reduce them to pieces, melt down the reusable parts, and safely dispose of the remainder. This "make a reef" idea seems overly enviro-friendly, more of latching on to a trend than any kind of actual benefit.

Re:scrap?

[maggard]

Why not have a scrap dealer buy the cars? 'Cause they're full of asbestos and most scrap-dealers aren't enthused about dealing with that. Salvage folks would be further turned off by the poor volume-to-salvagable-metals ratio of an old subway car. Shipping 400 Redwings to a plant, stripping them of asbestos & other nasties then ripping out the various metals: Not worth it.

Instead MTA found a clever way of disposing the vehicles with the asbestos in-place and looking good in the process. At a cost of $1.3 million that's not a bad deal, certianly less then anyone else would want. Heck it's probably less then it would cost to just ship them to an appropriate disposal facilty much less any disposal fees.

My only question is if there's a 1%-for-art bit in this. A sculpture on the ocean floor made up of subway cars - could be pretty neat, especially considering the constraints in seeing it in situ.

Re:scrap?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Oh, sure, instead of paying a dealer to safely scrap the cars, let's just dump them in the ocean instead! Problem solved!

The for-art bit can be solved by transporting an artist out to the dump site, and having it defecate into the water over the submerged cars, thus confirming the artist's view that it's not art unless it challenges your beliefs and includes feces.

Re:scrap?

[windi]

Well, AFAIK this help if there are a lot of fish and other reef dwellers in the water, but I didn't know that there were reef dwellers in New York.

Re:scrap?

[maggard]

As the State was enthused over reusing the old subway cars for this artificial reef (it's their project) and the EPA signed off on it it's not quite the stereotypical "dumping at sea". If you'd bothered to read a bit you'd know that the Redwings had been cleaned of all greases, etc. and that asbestos was specifically considered and deemed safe in an marine environment. So now there's a reef in what was formerly a marine "desert", a landfill *without* a bunch of rotting old subway cars, and an interesting model for ecologically & financially sound disposal.

Instead you shoot-from-the-hip with a stupid comment. The art note isn't worth commenting on beyond it speaks to your own limitations & biases.

Contaminated windows

[farmhick]

The article says they have to remove the windows to prevent them from contaminating the water. What are the windows made of? Radioactive glass?

Although that would explain some of the people we see in the movies that ride those things all night long.

Re:Contaminated windows

[freuddot]

What are the windows made of? Radioactive glass?

The main concern, when you dump something out there, is not how bad it is, but rather how long it will stay there. How long do you think this glass will stay there ? My guess would probably be somewhere around 10000 to 100000 years. If that does count as polution, what does ?

And how would you like that :
A big shard of security glass, just in the middle of your next lobster ? yummi. ;-)

Re:Contaminated windows

[maggard]

It's not the glass, it's the laminates inside the glass and the coatings on it. Subway cars don't use house window glass but instead the safety glass similar to car windowshields (at least in the US; European vehicles have different, lower safety standards (no flame, just a basic fact, many argue that the US's standards are overly high.))

Anyway, the stuff that bonds the layers of glass together along with the IR blocker embedded in many windows is a nasty stuff when it degrades into the ocean, particularly into stuff growing directly on top on it.

As to any danger from future large panes of glass on the sea-bottom, that's not likely a big concern. The sea beds where these artificial reefs are being placed are pretty much 95% silica and the glass will erode due to mechanical and chemical action eventually. In the meantime it's not like kids will be walking on this sand.

Re:Contaminated windows

[farmhick]

Hey, thanks for the reply. Didn't know that the windows in the subway cars were that technical. I just figured they were just tempered glass panes.

Asbestos

[ianchaos]

I find it disturbing that they claim the asbestos will not be a problem because it is sealed into the subway cars. They give no definition of method used for sealing and leave no estimates on the long term safety due to corrosion of the subway cars. this site points out that "Colonizing animals will live and feed in and on the cars; once the asbestos is exposed as metal degrades, the animals will be using asbestos as a substratum for habitat and food." This is something that should be looked into carefully. On a related topic the US Government planned to dump 165 twenty-foot containers of asbestos at a former munitions dump ,which is 18 miles off the coast and 12,000 feet down. I don't know what the outcome of this finally was but this article has a number of specialist in the fields of oceanography and asbestos wieghing in on it with no clear consensus on the environmental risk that it poses.

Re:Asbestos

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your concerns will be lessened once you find out a little bit more about asbestos.

First off, asbestos is not some horribly toxic chemical, but is rather a naturally occuring mineral that has been used in China for hundreds of years.

Secondly, the health hazards of asbestos are not chemical in nature (like PCBs or DDT) but physical. The main problem is when asbestos fibers are inhaled. This causes cancer, not because of what the fibers are made of, but because of the physical action of these microfine mineral needles puncturing the cells. (I admit I'm a little vague on how it works myself.)

So basically, since it is naturally occuring, I'll bet there are thousands of sites around the world where there is exposed asbestos on the sea floor. And since it's underwater, there is little problem of it being an inhalation hazard for humans.