Osborne Reef

Osborne Reef is an artificial reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida constructed of a 50-foot diameter circle of concrete jacks. In the 1970s, the reef was the subject of an ambitious project for expansion utilizing old discarded tires. The project ultimately failed, and the "reef" has come to be considered an environmental disaster — ultimately doing more harm than good in the coastal Florida waters.

History

In 1972, Broward Artificial Reef Inc. (BARINC) proposed the construction of an enlarged artificial reef to Broward County as a way to both dispose of old tires as well as lure more game fish to the area. Similarly-designed reefs had already been constructed in the Northeastern United States, the neighbouring Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, and Africa. Gregory McIntosh, an employee with BARINC, would laud the project to the attendees of a 1974 conference on artificial reefs: "Tires, which were an esthetic pollutant ashore, could be recycled, so to speak, to build a fishing reef at sea,"

With the endorsement of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Broward Country approved the project. That spring, enthusiastically supporting the reef construction, more than 100 privately-owned boats volunteered to assist with the project; accompanied by the USS Thrush they simultaneously dropped thousands of tire bundles onto the reef. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company provided equipment for the auspicious undertaking; even supporting the project so far as to drop a gold-painted tire from a Goodyear Blimp to christen the site.

The culmination of the project was the deposit of over two million tires bound with steel clips over 36 acres of the ocean floor, approximately 7000 feet offshore and at a depth of 65 feet.

Failure

The really good idea was to provide habitat for marine critters so we could double or triple marine life in the area, [...] It just didn't work that way. I look back now and see it was a bad idea."

— Ray McAllister, founder of BARINC in a 2007 interview

Little marine life has been successful in latching onto the man-made reef and the majority never even has the opportunity to do so. When deposited, while a few tires were individual loose entities, the majority were bound together with nylon or steel clips (or bands). Unfortunately, no exceptional efforts were made to ensure the non-corrosivity of the steel restraints and they summarily failed — resulting in the loosing of over two million individual, lightweight tires. This newfound mobility destroyed any marine life that had thus far grown on the tires, and effectively prevented the growth of any new organisms. Furthermore, the tires were now easily subject to the tropical winds and storms that frequent the eastern Floridian seaboard and are found to collide (at times with tremendous force) with other, natural coral reefs only 70 feet away: compounding their uselessness with environmentally damaging side-effects.

Of some concern to environmentalists is a "minortoxin" being emitted by the tires. Todd Barber, chairman of the Reef Ball Foundation downplayed this aspect of the tire reef in comparison to the damage they cause other reefs: "I don't think anybody's worried about [the toxin] [...] The primary hazard [is] they're moving around."

Lastly, the concern of adjacent coastal areas is that the tires are not remaining within the boundaries of Osborne Reef. In 1995, Hurricane Opal managed to spread over 1000 tires onto the Florida Panhandle, west of Pensacola; and in 1998, Hurricane Bonnie deposited thousands of the tires onto North Carolina beaches.

This project is not the only of its nature to fail; Jack Sobel, The Ocean Conservancy's director of strategic conservation said in a 2002 interview that "I don't know of any cases where there's been a success with tire reefs." That year, The Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup removed 11,956 tires from beaches all over the world.

Cleanup

In 2001, Dr. Robin Sherman of Nova Southeastern University was awarded a $30,000 grant by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to begin a tire removal program. She was able to coordinate the removal of only 1600 tires from the reef, and at a cost estimated at $17 a tire.

In 2002, Floridian and Broward County environmental officials began the long and arduous process of setting into motion a plan to remove the tires. An original estimate of between $40 and $100 million led the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to initially plan to arrange a deal with those companies whose construction damages the seabed and reefs. Where they would previously mitigate their destructive construction with replacement constructs for reefs, the state would require them to make their amends by removing tires from the Osborne Reef. This plan faced criticism on the part of environmental groups who felt that this would only hasten the destruction of more marine habitats. Whether these criticisms were a catalyst or not, Florida did not follow through on these plans.

Coastal America, a partnership of federal agencies, state and local governments and private groups, is now involved in the execution of a new program to remove the tires. Their support, along with the cooperation of NOAA and the Florida DEP cumulated in a plan with an initial estimated cost of only $5 million, with the tires to be recycled at a cost of about US$3 per tire. A pilot program will go underway June 2007 to test a plan for the successful removal of the tires. This plan, pending success of the pilot and subsequent approval, incorporates the assistance of the US Navy — whose interest in the project is to use it as a training exercise for divers at no cost to Florida. Petty Officer Phil Beaufort, a Navy spokesman explained that it would alleviate the county's need to "hire a professional salvage company, which is not going to be cheap," It would also provide the naval divers with "an opportunity to get real training and do good." Should the pilot program proceed as expected, the project is expected to run through 2010, with an ultimate total cost of US$3.4 million.