The dormant oil platform known as High Island 389-A in the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles southeast of Galveston is now set to be demolished….after 30 years after it was abandoned….and now that is has become the center of a lush ecosystem.

Under Interior Department rules, owners of of nonproducing platforms one to five years to remove them. For High Island that deadline is January. Built in 1981 the platform falls inside the 56-square-mile Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, one of 14 federally designated underwater areas and the only such area in the Gulf. The federal government estimates the blasts needed to remove one platform kill 800 fish but observers of previous take downs estimate it be in the thousands and much of the marine life on or around the structure dies.

Efforts are under way to save High Island 389-A. The company who owns the platform convert has put forth a plan to have the structure removed down to 85 feet below the water surface, as required under a federal rigs-to-reefs program. More at nytimes.com