Bright Idea of Tire Reef Now Simply a Blight

Will Nuckols, project coordinator for Coastal America, called the rolling tires a "coastal coral destruction machine."

"For the past several decades, people have looked at this task and then at each other and said, 'Well I can't do that,' " he said.

With each dive team retrieving about 700 tires a week, officials estimate that the effort would take three years. They plan to begin in 2008.

"It's easy to throw something into the water," said Keith Mille of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "What we're finding is it's extremely expensive to remove something from the water."

The first documented artificial reef in the United States was created off South Carolina in the 1830s. Over time, people have sunk rocks, trees, concrete, ships and barges to create reefs. When successful, they were -- and continue to be -- popular attractions with anglers and divers alike.

Artificial reefs made from scrap tires began in the United States in the late 1950s or early '60s, when the country was facing the monumental task of disposing of millions of automobile tires. At the time, stockpiled tires were creating fire hazards, fostering mosquito breeding and blighting the landscape.

Reefs made from tires seemed like an easy solution.

While coastal communities around the country -- in Texas, California, Florida, North Carolina and elsewhere -- embraced the idea, few projects, if any, were conceived on the grand scale as the one off Fort Lauderdale. Proponents touted it as the largest scrap tire reef in the world.

A 1974 Goodyear pamphlet boasted, "Worn out tires may be the best things that have happened to fishing since Izaak Walton," the author of the classic The Compleat Angler .

"There was a lot of local enthusiasm," said Ray McAllister, one of the founders of a local group that pushed for the tire reef and now professor emeritus of ocean engineering at Florida Atlantic University. "We all thought we were doing a good job for the environment."

A tire reef had seemed to work in New England, he said, and organizers figured it would work here.

The project had received a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers and had active support from Broward County, officials said.

While there were initial hopeful reports, it was clear after a decade that the idea wasn't working. Sea creatures didn't grow on the tires. Today, the tires look the same as they did they day they were dropped.

Tires that had been lashed together for stability broke loose, making it easier for them to roll around. With the tires mobile, it was difficult for sea life to make a home there.

Today, most states have restricted or banned tires in artificial reefs, according to a 2004 joint publication of the Gulf and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

In retrospect, McAllister said, "it was a terrible mistake and I hate to admit it. . . . The conventional wisdom, or whatever you want to call it, was not such a bright idea."