Redbirds

New York has always been associated with the subway ever since its early days. These subway systems have grown over time and the technology has been improved. One generation of these subway cars was known as the Redbirds. The subway cars were known as redbirds for their color and were built by the American Car & Foundry Company and the St. Louis Car Company. New York has had the problem of what to do with this abundance of subway cars. Usually, each car is stripped and eligible pieces are sold as scrap, which costs around $16,000, even after scrap sales. In the recycled reef process, each car is stripped down of all plastics, tanks, degradable materials, wheels, wires, seats, doors, light bulbs, etc., drained of oil and then scrubbed and cleaned to avoid any kind of water contamination. Then the train shells are loaded onto barges and shipped to their various destinations along the east coast. This whole process costs about $9,500 per car, that's $6,500 dollars left, and they are helping rebuild reefs.

Coral reefs have always been associated with tropical clear waters and the Caribbean, not the waters off of the east coast of the United States. That's just where artificial reefs have been emerging. These reefs have been started by the east coast states in hopes to enhance recreational fishing and sport diving opportunities in the coastal waters. Scrap materials recycled on reefs include steel and concrete bridges, concrete culvert pipe, steel dry dock work platforms, ex-military aircraft and even intercontinental ballistic missiles. More recently more natural structures, bags of oyster and mussel shells are also being used to start and support artificial reefs. The three factors that matter most in artificial reef building are the longevity of the material, the stableness of the material, and the environmental effects of the material. What these artificial reef starters do is provide a place for sea sponges and other coral and fishes to habitat areas that would normally be unsuitable. Most of the coast where the proposed artificial reefs would be placed is covered as much as 4-5 feet of sand. Coral reefs need rock formations and other hard surfaces to start and maintain a healthy reef.

Somewhere along the way someone at the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) thought that it would be a good idea to use their abundance of retired subway cars to help build artificial reefs where there are none. This idea barely came into reality in 2001 when New York City offered 1300 "redbirds" for use as artificial reefs. Eventually the first of the cars went to Delaware and South Carolina. The project however was almost completely stopped by Cindy Zipf and her Clean Ocean Action organization. They argued that the asbestos in the redbirds was harmful to the environment and that the actual subway cars would not last in the ocean environment. This lead to New York State rejecting New York City's offer for the subway cars to be used in New York waters so that they were sent outside of the state. It turned out that the theory that the subway cars wouldn't last was based on one particular subway car that had been hit and torn apart by a dragger, which is a type of fishing net dragged along the ocean bottom by a boat. As to the asbestos it is only harmful when the tiny fibers are airborne and are breathed in and lodged permanently in the lungs.