DETROIT-Detroit expects to spend about $480,000 to collect and dispose of more than 700,000 tires illegally dumped on private and city-owned land. Both city and state officials hope tougher enforcement of laws regulating the disposal of tires will help control the problem in the future. Three companies have been hired to do the work for the city.
Saginaw-based Environmental Rubber Recycling Inc. and Detroit-based Environmental & Technical Controls Inc. will split the state grant money Detroit received to clean up 437 parcels with more than 220,000 tires.
Detroit Tank & Excavating Co. has a $200,000 contract from the city to clear and dispose of about 554,250 tires dumped on 499 private sites.
Neb. offers grants to spur markets
HASTINGS, Neb.-The state Department of Environmental Quality hopes to create markets for scrap tires under a new grant program for public and private entities.
Last year the Nebraska Legislature created the Scrap Tire and Recycling Incentive Fund with money generated through the collection of a $1 fee on sales of new tires. The state expects the fee to raise $1.4 million a year for the fund.
Half the fund money will be available for grants, and the other half can be loaned, to public and private entities endeavoring in such projects as removal of existing tire piles; establishment of new tire collection sites; and tire processing projects and other market development programs.
The grants will be awarded on an annual basis while loans will be offered anytime throughout the year.
S.C. launches tire pile cleanup
ROCK HILL, S.C.-State officials began the year delving into the cleanup of an old sand pit filled with an estimated 40,000 illegally dumped scrap tires.
The state Department of Health & Environmental Control has provided a $23,600 grant, generated from the $2 fee on the sale of new tires, to clean up the Heath Springs dump and a much smaller one near Lancaster. Local county officials are lending heavy equipment and prison labor to do the work.
The tires are being carted to and recycled by The Disposal Service of Waxhaw, N.C., officials said.
Dumping blamed on fee exmptions on fee exemptions
OKLAHOMA CITY-An Oklahoma official is urging an elimination of exemptions to the state tire fee, which is being blamed for a surge in illegal dumping in the state.
Large-load trucks, government vehicles, farm vehicles and new cars are all exempt from the $1-per-tire fee, which has been in effect since 1989.
Those exemptions create a shortfall in money needed to shred or recycle tires that have been discarded in Oklahoma, according to state officials.
The state fee funds the processing of 2.1 million tires per year. But an additional 1 million used tires are discarded every year, says Fenton Rood, chief of solid waste management for the state Department of Environmental Quality.
In his report to state House and Senate leaders, Mr. Rood's main recommendation was elimination of the exemptions, saying that would raise enough money to recycle or shred all of Oklahoma's waste tires.