Ever been stuck on a bridge in rush-hour traffic and wondered what happens to these things when they are finally retired? Demolition, a landfill, a quiet, faded exit from the maps? For one Brooklyn crossing, the fate was more dramatic, and a lot wetter. According to a 2019 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation bulletin, crews sank 2.3 million pounds of the former Mill Basin Drawbridge, including its gatehouse building and bridge-support concrete, at Hempstead Reef earlier that year. That raised the Mill Basin total to 4.5 million pounds. At the time of that 2019 deployment, the reef site spanned 744 acres and sat about three nautical miles from the South Shore of Long Island; the site has since been expanded to 850 acres under New York's ongoing reef program. It's almost too convenient: aging infrastructure gets a second life. But convenient stories deserve a second look, so here is what the bridge-to-reef proposal offers, and what researchers believe.
From the Belt Parkway to the ocean floor
