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?

[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.

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.