Military divers stretched thin by wars and Haiti relief delay cleanup of ill-advised tire reef

Stretched military halts cleanup of Fla. tire reef

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Military divers are being pulled off a project to clean up an artificial reef off the coast of Florida that turned into an environmental disaster.

The divers have spent the last three summers pulling up thousands of tires a mile off the beach at Fort Lauderdale.

Hundreds of thousands were sunk there in 1972 in hopes they would turn into a coral reef. But nothing grew and they became scattered across the ocean floor, damaging real coral reefs.

The military began cleaning up the tires as a training exercise at no cost to the state.

But now a Pentagon official says the diving crews are being stretched too thin by two wars and helping repair port facilities damaged by the earthquake in Haiti.

The earliest the cleanup could continue is 2012.