Cost of disposing of junk tires stacking up

Cost of disposing of junk tires stacking up

Illegal dumping down, but getting rid of tires a significant expense

news@theeveningtimes.com

Crittenden County is seeing fewer old tires being thrown in ditches and dumped along the roadside, but the cost to dispose of them is a posing a looming financial crisis on cities and counties.

County Judge Woody Wheeless said every once in a while the county will get a call about 30 or 40 tires on the side of the road, but not to the degree they were in the past since they made a trailer available to the public to dispose of them.

Every resident in the county is allowed to drop off four tires a year at the county shop for free.

“We haven’t seen any increase,” Wheeless said. “It was a problem for a while.

But we do have a trailer now where individuals can take tires there where before they didn’t have that access.”

Marion Road Department Manager Gordon Floyd said he also hasn’t seen as many being dumped in Marion as in years past.

“We haven’t seen anybody put a bunch out there yet,” Floyd said. “We’ve been keeping them picked up as best we can.”

Mayor Frank Fogleman said the policy of allowing residents to call the city to pick them up and get rid of four tires a year seems to be helping.

“Every resident gets four tires picked up for free,” Fogleman said. “I think that’s generous.”

Landfills no longer accept old tires because of the environmental hazards they pose. Scrap tires present special disposal challenges because they take up space in landfills because they are bulky, are made from a variety of materials, can ignite and create tire fires, and tend to rise to the surface. They also provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes. In addition, illegal tire dumping also pollutes the environment.

About three million waste tires are generated every year in Arkansas, according to Arkansas Department of Environmental Protection.

The state has a waste tire program administered by ADEQ which helps cities and counties dispose of scrap tires. The program is funded through fees placed on the purchase of new tires and those collected by tire dealers.

Arkansas charges $2 per automobile tire, $5 for truck tires, and one dollar per tire on waste tires. The funds are passed on to waste tire management districts throughout the state.

In 2016, the program collected 2.3 million car tires, 274,000 truck tires, and 22,969 waste tires, and $5.7 million in fees, according to the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.

Crittenden County is part of East Arkansas Waste Tire Inter-District which covers Clay, Cross, Green, Lawrence, Lee, Mississippi, Phillips, Poinsett, Randolph, and St. Francis counties.

Wheeless said the district contracts with Liberty Tire of Tupelo, Miss., to haul away the county’s tires.

“When our trailer gets full they bring an empty one up here and hook on to the one that is full and haul it off to Mississippi,” Wheeless said.

According to Wheeless, it costs the district about $150 per ton or about $350,000 a year to dispose of waste tires.

Wheeless said the cost is becoming an increasing burden on cities and counties because the money collected and being paid to the tire districts isn’t enough to cover the cost of disposal.

It costs about $1.91 per tire to dispose of one, but the districts are only getting about $1.50 from the state.

“We’re bleeding,” Wheeless said. “Forty cents doesn’t sound like much. But when you multiply that by a bunch of tires — and Crittenden County generates more tires than any other in the district — it adds up quick. It’s not enough to break us even right now.”

By Mark Randall