Collapsing subway car reefs no concern in OC

A barge carrying 42 New York City subway cars reaches the waters off Ocean City, where the used cars were dumped into the ocean on May 16, to create an artificial reef for sea creatures. ARTIFICIAL REEF PROJECT

(March 6, 2009) News that some of the New York City subway cars submerged off the New Jersey coast to create artificial reefs have unexpectedly collapsed has not deterred those touting the success of a similar artificial reef program in Ocean City.

Since last May, around 130 decommissioned subway cars from the New York City system have been sunk off the coast of Ocean City to create fish habitat and help rebuild the populations of certain fish in hot fishing spots.

The stainless steel cars were expected to have an underwater life of more than 30 years, but a November inspection of cars sunk near Atlantic City, N.J., found that some have collapsed after a matter of months, leading that state to suspend its subway car reef program in early February until the cause is determined.

"We're aware of that and we're going to be monitoring ours closely," said Greg Hall, president of the Ocean City Reef Foundation. "But I think it needs more examination before we throw the program under the bus. They have no idea what happened in New Jersey yet."

The 44 subway cars submerged in New Jersey collapsed seven months after they were sunk last April. Possible theories include damage from rough seas, impacts from fishing gear and an unusually rough landing on the ocean floor when they were sunk.

One organization is looking at the reef failure and saying, "We told you so." The Surfrider Foundation, a California-based clean ocean advocacy group with chapters nationwide, including one in Ocean City, has long contended the subway cars are not good materials for creating reefs.

"Even assuming they were completely clean and had no toxic substances, which is obviously an issue, they are not the appropriate structure to use for reefs," said Surfrider Environmental Director Chad Nelsen. "And there's the larger philosophical issue of whether we should really use the ocean as a dump."

Gail Blazer, Ocean City's environmental engineer and a member of the Reef Foundation, said collapsing subway cars will not damage the ocean environment or harm the underwater creatures. The issue, she said, is really one of money. The officials in New Jersey, where the reef program is publicly funded, are concerned that they might not be getting their money's worth out of the cars, she said.

Each individual subway car costs approximately $600, with a shipment running from $25,000 to $30,000. Ocean City sunk around 130 subway cars in multiple deployments last year, with the first being sent to the ocean floor at the Jackspot fishing grounds in May. All of those cars were paid for through private donations to the Reef Foundation, and the cars were brought down to Ocean City on a barge straight from New York City.

Hall said a professional photographer dove to the site of the first deployment in the fall to take pictures of how the reefs were forming and all the cars there appeared to be intact.

"As soon as the weather breaks in the spring we'll go back to the Jackspot, because they will have been down there almost a year, and inspect them again," he said.

States all along the East Coast have used the New York City subway cars to create reefs in their waters and Hall said this is the first instance he knows of where any of the hundreds of cars down there have collapsed. With the damage only found to four of the cars, he feels it's likely an isolated incident and the cars are still a good way to create fish habitat.

"It sounds to me like they didn't really work," Nelsen said of the damaged cars in New Jersey.

All sorts of materials have been sunk in the oceans to create artificial reefs, such as old ships, army tanks, leftover construction equipment and concrete slabs. Issues surrounding the environmental effects of dumping all these items into the ocean abound.

The Reef Foundation turned down an offer of the subway cars in 2001 due to concerns regarding the long-term effects of the asbestos found in the carbon steel cars. But a new batch of cars offered in 2007 were made out of stainless steel and contained negligible levels of asbestos, so the Reef Foundation changed its mind and accepted the cars.

Even if the cars do collapse, Blazer said they would still serve their underwater purpose. Ocean creatures like oysters need a hard surface on which to attach themselves and grow and, in turn, become food for fish, so a subway car in any shape would fit the bill.

"There's still a use there, they still create a hard bottom," she said.