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Old Subway Cars As Artificial Reef
Pickens writes "Hundreds of retired New York City subway cars are being sunk sixteen nautical miles off Delaware's Indian River Inlet and about 80 feet underwater, continuing the transformation of a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog. 'They're basically luxury condominiums for fish,' says Jeff Tinsman, artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. Subway cars are roomy enough to invite certain fish, too heavy to shift easily in storms, and durable enough to avoid throwing off debris for decades. Tinsman particularly favors the newer subway cars with stainless steel on the outside to create reefs. 'We call these the DeLoreans of the deep,' he said. But success comes at a price because other states, seeing Delaware's successes, have started competing for the subway cars, which New York City provides free. 'The secret is out, I guess,' said Michael G. Zacchea, the MTA official in charge of getting rid of New York City's old subway cars."
This shore is a good idea! (speaking littorally of course)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
You fools! If the dolphins develop time travel there will be no stopping them!
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
1. dump some old trash in the previously perfectly fine ocean
2. ???
3. LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS FOR FISH
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Getting mugged by a harpoon weilding, cowry shell demanding aquatic gang member. Insane.
Task Mangler
I actually read this article earlier today (they're coming for my slashdot credibility card!) and it mentioned the amount of asbestos and other materials in the cars. Does anyone know how that comes into play in a marine environment?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Please keep it there!
With an eye on recycling materials and reducing construction costs for storage cellars, some wineries in northern Mexico have opted for this great idea:
Dig a deep trench, place old RR cars inside, then fill the trench up again with dirt. And there it is, a cave build like a Lego. A little bit of retrofitting may be necessary, especially where car doors meet, but still, you can save a ton of money in this fashion.
Surely, not only Mexican wineries are using the same technique.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I thought scrap metal values had gone insane recently - I know this is a sort of recycling, but I'm surprised the cars aren't worth a lot for the steel.
Brisbane,QLD has had an old Brisbane Transport tram as part of the Curtin Artificial Reef since 1981.
http://www.urgq.org/curtin_artif_reef.htm
"A new discovery by our great leader shows ancient American maps may be off by 200 miles, our great leaders scientists believe New York may have been situated at the opening of the Delaware Bay; alternative theories suggest these submerged relics may have been attributed somehow to experiments at the Black Mesa facility (formerly CERN-LHC) in 2009"
[history] (net.earth.news) 34899 points posted 3 mars hours ago by GreatLeaderHalliburton retaliates against France!
"The Great Leader has sent supporting troops to support Halliburton forces in retaliation following French aggression last week against the sovereign nation. Live holostream and kill-cam with Geraldo Rivera's clone from 7pm."
[worldnews] (net.earth.actualités) 19148 points posted 5 mars hours ago by GreatLeaderOut here we've sunken many ships to make underwater habitats for fish. The boats are stripped of oils, paints, and hazardous stuff before sinking -- well, nowadays, anyway. Great for scuba divers to look at, so I've been told.
I can't find a great link in 10s of searching, but this is a start:
http://www.divingbc.com/
Hoopla, I tried for ten minutes find anything about the negative impacts of artificial reefs, using Google Scholar ( http://scholar.google.com/ ).
I used "artificial" and "reefs" in combinations with words like "bioaccumulation", "pcb", "tyres", "pollutants", "chemicals", etc.
Surprisingly, I only found statements like "needs more research", "no measurable effect" and no-brainers like that.
Could it be that I missed those true alarmist reports I guessed would be there?! One read like:
http://www.flseagrant.org/program_areas/ecosystem_health/artificial_reefs/index.htm#21
"The oil ash and control reefs were constructed with the aid of divers in just one day, and monitoring of the reefs was carried out for one year. Leaching of trace metals from the blocks was extremely slow, and only limited instances of enhanced bioaccumulation of metals were observed. However, pressure from environmental groups led the electric power industry and the State of Florida to discontinue construction of artificial reefs from stabilized waste material."
I don't want to play this in the hands of waste mongers, but hope some could actually find some more conclusive results.
Don't get me wrong. Play it safe, please.
.
A very pretty picture is painted for what amounts to environmental vandalism. (paraphrasing): "We are creating a tropical paradise, where diversity parallels that of the Galapagos Islands. The majestic undersea garden will support myriad species, the colours and the life will rival any natural environment, and will, in fact, surpass anything that nature could create. We are dumping this waste in the ocean for the common good. The beautiful seaweed will dance a serenade, attracting fishes and tourists alike. Because the trash increases the potential habitats (and micro-climates), species diversity must increase--niche species which would otherwise have difficultly surviving will flourish.
Yes, dumping rubbish is the sea is a Good Idea(TM). The secret is out!
Maybe it'll work out better this time...
Wouldn't make much of a difference either way to global warming.
To the degree it increases marine biomass, it's just as effective as increasing any OTHER biomass for capyuring CO2. So in theory it would decrease global warming.
Much too small an effect to be measurable.
It -has- been suggested that spreading iron on the ocean in areas where lack of iron is the limiter on plant-growth would allow much more plants to grow and thus capture a lot of CO2. I think the biggest uncertanity there was for how -long- the CO2 would stay out of the atmosphere.
If a significant fraction of the dead plants sink, retention would be good, hundreds of years at the very least. If most of them decompose near the surface and the CO2 is released from the water, there wouldn't be much benefit.
The only other cities in America with metro systems are happy with their own trains, and unfortunately due to the American lack of interest in public transporation, metro systems aren't spreading much to new places.
By the way, are you familiar with the rumour that the Pyongyang Metro isn't actually in public use? Some say that it is only run when foreigners tour it, and everybody on board are actors.
Did no-one else notice the most important part of this story?
You can get subway cars for free!
I'll have five, thanks.
All of these "artificial reef" projects seem questionable to me.
The idea that tossing junk into offshore waters is beneficial... well, as the Church Lady used to say, "Isn't that convenient?"
In the 1970s, there was a similar project in Florida, involving discarded tires. The system used to hold the tires in place failed after a few years, tires started to come loose, the fact that it wasn't stable made it a failure as an artificial reef, mildly toxic stuff started to leech out of the tires, and the whole thing was an environmental disaster. The process of cleaning up the tires, now in progress, is expensive and labor-intensive. Read about it here
The sea is a very corrosive environment. Before starting this project, did anyone check to see whether there are any subway cars that have already been in the ocean for a few decades to see what's happened to them?
In the case of these subway cars, I'd worry about copper. Copper is deadly poison to most marine organisms. It's the bane of people who try to set up salt-water aquaria.
I notice that the article doesn't say that the subway cars contained no electric wiring. Nor does it say that all the copper was removed from them before scuttling them.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They should do this with barrels of nuclear waste too.
Then why did I get arrested for pushing a car into the local river? I was trying to help the environment, people!
Those who have telepathy have no need to RTFA.
Artificial reefs have not been a universal success. The State of Florida is spending millions to clean up dumped tires from the Osborne Reef.
Statesman
like hydrocarbon grease and lubricant, paints and coatings with possibly toxic compounds, the plasticizers and antioxidants in the plastic and foam,......
you could keep an entire university of scientists busy for years
and alot of the stuff is probably, if you look hard, sourced from china, so it may not even be what it is supposed to be, eg very very toxix pbbs (poly brominated biphenyls) are banned in civilized countrys..
scrap steel metal only very recently became really expansive (within the last two monthes).
look at the fourth column for scrap steel price. See how much it rose in the last 2-3 monthes and over last year.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
They used this in one of last season's episodes of CSI:NY. They found a dead scuba diver, and that led them to discover another one lodged in a submerged subway car.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
This reminds me of the people that complain about oil rigs in the environment and yet they create some of the best fishing areas around for the same reason. The rigs become a reef environment.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Point, head, you, whoosh, etc... The subway cars clad in stainless steel are called the DeLoreans of the deep.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
That is because the tires are causing more hard then good. The subway cars allow more natural things to grow on them and hide in them. And the subway cars will go away over time leaving the natural stuff behind. Virginia has been doing this for what 5-8 years now? It does work to bring more fish to the area. The summer flounder numbers were way up (along with black sea bass, and others) until the commercial guys dragged their nets through the reef locations. These artificial reef locations are off limits to commercial fishing it is posted on all the charts. So, they just dumped a bunch of tanks off the cost as well.
They used tanks since the commercial fishing guys were dragging their nets all through the subway cars and other off limit (for commercial fishing) places. They lose more gear on the tanks and will hopefully stop 'fishing' there.
i shouldn't have been so lazy, but they are the same trains!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbird_trains
"Most Redbirds were phased out from 2001 to 2003 and replaced by the new R142 and R142A cars. 1,208 Redbirds have been sunk at sea off the coasts of Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Virginia as artificial reefs to promote marine life, to serve as a barrier and to enhance recreational scuba diving. Delaware received 558 cars, Georgia 50, New Jersey 250, South Carolina 200, and Virginia 150. An episode of CSI NY titled "The Deep" used these cars as part of the story line, and even featured well-repkucated underwater shots of mockups of the cars. However, the show places them in the East River of New York City."
Scrap Metal is BIG business: http://demolitionscrapmetalnews.com/?page_id=17
...Somebody's going to rent a crane barge with tug and recover them all (especially the stainless steel ones) for scrap a make a fortune at the salvage yards!
Stainless Steel is very recyclable as it contains very expensive Chrome and Nickel and other alloys. Copper has never been higher too.
Me thinks under Martime Law these are abandoned "sunken ships" and are subject to full finders-keepers salvage rights (IANAL)
Tires, as it turns out, are terrible reef material. They're so light that they shift around in the currents, destroying anything that tries to grow on them. I know at least one project attempted to remedy that situation by tying all of the tires together...with steel cables. Obviously the steel cables rusted away within months and it was the same problem all over again.
Subway cars, however, are heavy enough to not move around in the currents and should provide ample anchorage for sea life.
I read the internet for the articles.
http://www.divemaster.ca/boeing/
Prior to the sinking it went through an extensive environmental cleanup until eventually all that was left was metal.
People have sunk objects with the purpose of protecting coasts for hundreds of years. For example see http://www.vitiaz.ru/congress/en/thesis/149.html. Also there is a big ship that was sunk in front of Venice hundreds of years ago to limit the tidal effects.
It seems that if you create a man made reef and then run low voltage electricity through it coral will grow 5-10 times faster.
When I honeymooned in Bali we went snorkeling around these structures. They seemed perfectly safe and the corals were amazing. The coral growth on the structures seemed far more prolific than that on the ocean bottom.
The redbirds were long past the end of their useful lives. Read this: http://www.nycsubway.org/cars/r262829.html
While still reliable given their age, it was no longer cost effective maintaining them. At a certain point, it becomes more affordable to buy new cars than to keep maintaining the old ones. These cars would bankrupt any city that couldn't afford to buy new cars. If a city can't afford to buy new cars, then they couldn't afford to maintain these ones.
They were also just not very nice anymore by any standard. They were at least 40 years old and had several million miles on them. The ride quality was similar to a soapbox racer. Seat comfort was an oxymoron. They lacked safety features such as electronic door obstruction indicators, which resulted in several well-publicized draggings down subway platforms and one or two near fatalities in just the last few years of service life. (The MTA actually flat-out refused to fix this problem towards the end, because they knew they were retiring these cars and saw no point in spending the money for the upgrade.)
They were "refurbished" in the 1980's but all that did was put them mostly back to the way they were in the 1960's. They did get air conditioning at that time, but by the end, it seemed like most cars' air conditioners were broken and the MTA again specifically declined to spend the energy fixing any problems that didn't result in trains being taken out of service. Keep in mind a broken air conditioner in these cars meant *hot* air was being blown into the car, not regular air or no air. A redbird with a broken air conditioner in summer is probably the last place on Earth I'd want to be. I'd be surprised if temperatures didn't reach 125 degrees on a regular basis in those cars.
At this point, 20 years on from their last refurbishment (and a couple million miles), they would have required another one to keep going. It costs about half as much to refurbish a car as it does to buy a new one.
So these "free" cars would have really only saved about 50% up front for any city that wanted them, then would have required a lot of ongoing maintenance. After probably only 3-4 years, that city would be behind where they would have been had they just bought new cars. And they'd be stuck with cars that were a borderline embarrassment and on which nobody wanted to ride. (New Yorkers rode them because we had to, not because we liked them.)
There comes a time when junk is junk.