SACRAMENTO, Calif. (March 30, 2016) — The California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) has awarded a $100,000 grant to environmental group Wildcoast for a one-year demonstration project to recover and recycle scrap tires in the California-Mexico border region of the Tijuana River.
In the work plan it submitted to CalEPA in October 2015, Wildcoast said it had identified 13 illegal waste dumps in the Tijuana River region.
The first part of the project, running from May to June 2016, involves evaluating the sites and preparing for tire pickup and removal, the plan said.
The second, which involves tire pickup, shredding, recycling and sale, runs from June 2016 to May 2017, it said.
“The U.S.-Mexico border Pacific Ocean coastline is home to 18,987 protected acres of some of the most ecologically significant coastal and marine ecosystems in the region,” Wildcoast said in its proposal.
“Yet these sensitive coastal ecosystems and the health of the border region community are under threat from California-generated waste tires,” it said.
Approximately 1 million California waste tires are exported to Mexico every year, Wildcoast said.
”In Tijuana, once they are discarded, they are carried with the rains impacting United States county, state and federally protected areas,” it said.