Ocean City Mayor Richard W. Meehan said offshore fishing opportunities bring vacationers who are "a very important part of our economic base. I think we're going to see an almost immediate benefit from this."
Transporting each barge-load of 40-plus cars costs $25,000, which puts the Ocean City Reef Foundation in constant fundraising mode.
Power, 63, who retired to a waterfront home in southern Anne Arundel County, bought the first barge-load in honor of his wife. He is picking up the bill on the next one to honor his daughter, Lindsey, who lives in New York and commutes by subway.
The Maryland Artificial Reef Initiative, a nonprofit group of anglers, conservationists and corporations that has built several reefs in the Chesapeake Bay over the past two years, has agreed to pay for another barge-load.
"See," Power said, "if everybody kicks in, all of the sudden - bang! - you've got something big."
Michael Zacchea, assistant chief operations officer for New York's MTA, said that he has more requests from Eastern Seaboard states than he has subway cars.
"It's a good problem to have," he said.
Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland are part of a rotation that will include states farther south and New York, once it clears regulatory hurdles.
The cars, built in the mid- to late 1960s, weigh 18 tons each and are 60 feet long. It takes MTA workers 135 hours on each car to remove materials that could break free or contaminate the water.
As the subway cars settled in their new home, boat captains were already marking on their sonar screens the arrival of fish, perhaps in search of new digs.
Power smiled. "The day we catch a white marlin and a tuna on it, that'll be the day we'll know this work was worth it."
candy.thomson@baltsun.com
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