Reported By: Jay Cashmere
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For decades tirey have tumbled and turned on the bottom of the ocean floor, tearing apart coral reefs.
Now a project to remove what has been called an ecological disaster has been initiated off Fort Lauderdale.
We first visited this site several years ago and previewed what had become a huge problem.
Now several agencies are working together to make sure millions of tires are removed from the ocean floor.
It was supposed to be a project to create an artificial reef in the 70's.
Two million tires covering 34 acres at the bottom of ocean a mile and half off Fort Lauderdale.
We inherited a problem of killing part of that reef area
It turned into an environmental disaster. The reef never formed, tires loosened and nearby coral was damaged. Now a massive cleanup effort has begun.
There are dive teams from the U.S. Army dive company, a Navy mudsuit team, Navy reserve and Coast Guard divers out of Miami.
The military has joined forces to clean up the mess.
A pilot project kicked off in June will pick up in 2008.
One by one tires are being pulled from 70 feet of water.
Tires as far as the eye can see, going down there in teams slinging these tires together, 60 to 80 tires getting a lift bag floating to surface
The Florida Department of Environmental protection issued permits and secured two million from the state legislature to fund the removal.
They also manage the disposal which happens to be unique in that the recycled tires will power a paper recycling plant.
They're actually hauling them to Georgia, where those tires will be chipped into approximately two inch squares. Those tire chips will then go to a paper recycling plant which will use the tires as fuel.
It's a salvage effort to help pump more money into a booming business in South Florida. Each tire brought up adds more to the diving community.
We've done some studies and found the reefs in Broward are worth two billion dollars a year to our economy so a substancial chunk of that reef is effected
The original goal was to create the world's largest artificial tire reef.
Three decades later a project that turned into an environmental problem is now turning into something that can benefit the environment.
Not only are we getting training value out of it but the environment, the people of Florida are getting something out of it to and that makes us feel good
The pilot project in June removed about 700,000 of the 2,000,000 tires.
Officials used that as a gauge to study the best and most efficient way for removal which they will use when it picks back up in 2008.
