Firestone Recall May Have Hurt Louisiana Tire Recycling Program

Louisiana consumers pay a $2-per-tire fee when they buy new tires, providing money to subsidize the tire recycling program.

That money usually is enough to provide the state's Waste Tire Management Fund with a revolving monthly surplus. But auditors have found that more waste tires were being redeemed than new tires sold beginning about February 2002 and the surplus has disappeared.

Tony Case, an official in the finance section of the Department of Environmental Quality, said Ford Motor Co. had a contract with a hauler who "was supposed to take them someplace up north."

While some tires were hauled away under the Ford program, others were simply taken to Louisiana recycling plants under the state's waste tire program, he said.

Case said some auto dealers apparently did not want to wait for Ford's contract transport or had so few tires they found it simpler to get local haulers to take them away.

But, Case said, there were no figures on the number of recalled tires brought in for replacement and no way of knowing which of those tires went out of state and which ended up at recycling plants here.

Bob Israel, executive director of the Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association, said the impact of the recall on the waste tire fund in 2002 was probably insignificant.

Noting that he was unaware of the Ford recovery program before being told about it Monday, Israel said, "I would think the Ford dealers would have taken advantage of the program and sent them back."

Firestone announced its recall program in August of 2000 and Ford followed suit with its recall program between May 2001 and March 2002, Israel said.

"If most of the exchanges took place between May 2001 and January 2002, as I suspect they did, I would think there would be very little impact on the state's (waste) tire program in 2002," he said.

DEQ rules for disposal of waste tires did not anticipate a tire recall and there was no mechanism for tracking tires that were exchanged at Ford dealerships and, in some cases, at Firestone stores, Case said.

Case said the tire disposal regulations will be rewritten to make sure that doesn't happen again. – Associated Press