Missouri tackles tire cleanup
The cleanup of Cass County’s largest remaining
tire dump has begun. Daniel Schutte, director of environmental quality
for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources said, “This
site has been a nuisance to the local community for years.”
The contractor, TRI-Rinse, is responsible for
the removal of nearly one million tires from the site. The tires
began accumulating back in the 1980s when a scrap tire hauler used
the site to off load his tires. The tire laws of 1990 made the site
an illegal tire dump and prevented his plan to cover the tires with
rocks from a local quarry.
The tires will be collected and used by TRI-Rinse
as a substitute for the more traditional gravel leachate collection
layers in landfills.
The cleanup is being funded by Missouri’s
scrap tire fee. A $.50 per-tire fee is collected for every new tire
purchased in Missouri. The program generates close to $2.1 million
annually, and all of the revenue is redirected into tire cleanup
efforts.
To date, more than 13 million tires have been
recycled from over 600 illegal tire dumps across Missouri since
the scrap tire program’s implementation. After Cass County
has been cleaned up, officials estimate that there will be 500,000
tires remaining in known tires dumps, but an estimated 1,000,000
remain in unidentified dump sites.
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