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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 27, 1996
96-147
CONTACT:
Randy Martin, (360) 407-6136
Libbie McClaflin, (360) 407-6144
Last State-Funded Tire Pile Cleanup Gets Underway
Olympia, WA -- Crews have begun disposing of about 150,000 old tires at a Toppenish site. When they're done in early 1997, it will mark the successful end of a seven-year effort to clean up more than 8 million tires in 27 large illegal tire piles throughout Washington.
"We believe this is an example of a government program which worked well," said Washington Department of Ecology Director Mary Riveland. "The 1989 legislature recognized these huge piles represented a potential threat to public health and safety. A $1 per new tire fee was enacted for a five-year period. This generated enough revenue to pay to clean up all the piles."
Riveland pointed out that the entire $10 million in revenues was used for contracts to private companies to clean up the tire piles.
The tire piles' main health and environmental problems come from mosquito breeding and if a pile catches fire. Two separate tire fires occurred at a city-owned landfill in Everett in 1983 and 1984. Those fires burned about one million tires and left about seven acres of ash and contaminated soils along with toxic fumes and ground water pollution.
The Toppenish tire pile is at a former sugar beet processing plant called the Aqua Tech site. Tire Recyclers, Inc., of Goldendale has been awarded the contract to shred the tires and remove them. Total cost will not exceed $300,000. It is expected that the shredded tires will be disposed of at the Roosevelt Regional Landfill in Klickitat County.
The seven-year cleanup has included 10 tire piles in Pierce County, seven tire piles in Thurston County, three tire piles in Spokane County, two piles in Clark County and one each in Lewis, Kittitas, Stevens, Asotin and Yakima counties.
Copyright © Washington State Department of Ecology. See http://www.ecy.wa.gov/copyright.html.
