#Cuomo: Old train cars to be dropped off Long Island coast to boost artificial reef

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the state will be dropping old train cars off the coast of Long Island Wednesday to help boost the area’s artificial reef.

“We’re going to a very cool thing tomorrow, which is dropping rail cars into the reef — what’s called Hempstead Reef — but it’s off Point Lookout, off Jones Beach. Three miles out from Point Lookout and Jones Beach,” Cuomo said during an interview on Long Island News Radio Tuesday morning.

“It will help the shoreline, it will help tourism, it will help quality of life. Fishing is a big deal, you know that I like to fish, diving is a big deal. All the people who come to Long Island to enjoy that, so it’s very cool.”

Cuomo explained he was reading an article about “old cars that were taking up space” on a number of railroad tracks.

“I called them up and I said, ‘I have an idea. Give me your old cars,’” he explained.

“Wells Fargo is the company I called, after I read the newspaper article. They said, ‘We have to call me back.’ I said, ‘Why do you have to call me back?’ They said, ‘We don’t really believe we’re talking to Governor Cuomo.’ I said, ‘Okay, hang up. Call me back.’”

“Nobody called and asked them for their old rail cars before, they were really very kind to us, thank you, Wells Fargo,” he added.

“The cost is de minimis … we are dropping rail cars, old ships that are no longer of use, we’re dropping a turbine, we’re dropping significant structures because these will last a long time.”

There are already several man-made reefs — some created by pieces of the old Tappan Zee and Kosciuszko bridges — in the Long Island Sound, two in Great South Bay and eight in the Atlantic Ocean off the south shore of Long Island, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.