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State program targets piles of old tires

Becky Kramer
Staff writer
June 26, 2008

NEWPORT, Wash. - After a couple defaulted on 10 forested acres they were buying from him, Larry Bennett discovered a dirty secret on the property.

The site was being used as an illegal tire dump.

At first, Bennett thought he had a few stacks of old rubber. But as he pushed deeper into the overgrown property, he found evidence that semis had disgorged truckloads of used tires.

"It was tires, tires, tires," said Bennett, who estimates he has 30,000 cast-off tires on his Newport property.

Bennett spent $1,000 on hauling, but it didn't make a dent in the piles of tires, which continued to appear surreptitiously after the couple left. Bennett finally turned to the Washington Department of Ecology for help.

Over the next year, the department will spend $1.2 million to clean up 47 tire piles around the state. Contractors will pull tires from Puget Sound, where they were submerged decades ago in failed efforts to create artificial reefs. The contractors also will remove old tires from auto salvage yards and take care of illegal dump sites, such as Bennett's.

Money for the work comes from a $1-a-tire fee on new purchases.

"It's a tough material to get rid of, and it costs money," said Kara Steward, who manages the Ecology Department's scrap-tire program.

Since 2005, the program has paid for the proper disposal of 3.6 million old tires. Another 5ƒ|million tires are targeted for cleanup through 2010, at an estimated cost of $8 million.

In addition to Bennett's property, this year's efforts include the city of Ritzville, which ended up with a pile of scrap tires after a junk-car cleanup in town, and AA Auto Salvage in Spokane.

Steward said many auto salvage yards received "grandfather rights" in 2005, when Washington capped at 800 the number of scrap tires landowners could keep without a license and solid waste permit. As a result, she said, the salvage yards qualify for one-time, free help in getting rid of their piles.

Left alone, the old tires breed mosquitoes, attract rodents and pose fire risks, said Mike LaScuola, the Spokane Regional Health District's environmental health specialist.

Once ignited, tire fires are extremely difficult to put out, he said. Neither water nor foam could douse a burning pile of scrap tires in Everett in the mid-1980s. The pile smoldered for six months.

"They continue to burn and ooze and melt," LaScoula said. "They're very noxious and toxic."

The Ecology Department contracts with L&S Tire Co. to haul away the tires. The company, which has offices in Spokane, shreds the rubber at its plant near Tacoma. Some of the tires are recycled into rubber mats, curbs or road beds for marshy areas. Others are sold to cement plants for fuel, or ground into "crumb rubber," which is sold overseas, said Mike Lavelle, one of L&S's owners.

About 6.5 million scrap tires come off Washington vehicles each year - roughly one for every resident. L&S is looking for new products to make out of the old tires, Lavelle said.

Bennett, who lives in California, likes the fact that the tires hauled off his Newport property will be recycled into something useful. He makes a living at the California Energy Resource Center, teaching companies how to cut their fuel bills.

"In California, we don't have these dump sites because we aren't as rural," Bennett added. "You can't have a truck disappear down a dirt road with a load of tires."

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