The Law of Unintended Consequences

It’s events like this that should make people stop and think before they leap to “do something for the environment.” Seems all too often those acts come back to bite you in the a**.

It took only days to create what was touted as the world's largest artificial reef in 1972, when a well-intentioned group dumped hundreds of thousands of old tires into the ocean. Now divers expect to spend years hauling them to the surface.

The tires turned out to be a reef killer, turning a swath of ocean floor the size of 31 football fields into a dead zone.

Military crews began retrieving the tires this week from about 70 feet underwater, where they had broken loose from bundles and wedged along a natural reef. As of Thursday, they had pulled up about 1,600 of the estimated 700,000 tires that must be hauled to the surface.

The idea was sound but the materials and method of implementation—well, not so good.

The dumping of nearly 2 million tires began in 1972 with much fanfare by a group called Broward Artificial Reef Inc., which had the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, support from Goodyear and help from hordes of volunteer boaters.

The project was intended to attract a rich variety of marine life while disposing of tires that were clogging landfills.

But hurricanes, tropical storms and cold fronts created wave action that loosened the tires and moved them around, killing part of one of three coral reefs off Fort Lauderdale, said Broward County marine biologist Kenneth Banks. Hundreds of tires have also washed up on beaches over the years.

If left unchecked, the tires could kill acres of coral and eventually start destroying other nearby reefs.

Divers from the Army, Navy and Coast Guard are cleaning up the mess, which already has proven to be much trickier than making it. The teams have been hampered by thunderstorms, wind-whipped waves and a balky crane that brought operations to a halt Thursday.

Weather permitting, divers will spend the summer months for the next three years bringing up the 700,000 tires while leaving behind the ones that seem to have remained in place — at least for now.

The tires will be trucked to a Georgia facility where they will be burned to power a paper recycling plant at a cost to Florida of $2 million.

I read last week about how one New Jersey shore-town has forbidden digging in the sand beyond a few inches. Sand replenishment activity has brought unexploded ordinance to the Jersey Shore.

Enjoy your summer.