True Recycling, a Berrien Township, Mich., tire facility, hopes to have its pile of 650,000 tires removed by the end of 2005.
Earl Maxwell, owner of the company, hopes that a 10-year-old state program, as well as increased demand for the scrap tires, will help him eliminate the tires.
This year, Maxwell will receive a $31,250 grant from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The money will cover the cost of having a processor haul away thousands of the tires that accumulated over the years on his property off True Road in Berrien Township.
Maxwell, who has participated in the grant program in the past, must agree to have the tires removed, processed and recycled by an end-user suitable to DEQ.
At one time, there were more than one million tires on his property, Maxwell said. Grants have helped recycle about one-third into other uses, and to build roads to reach every part of the piles in case of fire.
The grant is one of nine approved by the DEQ this year, a total of $600,000 to whittle about 480,000 scrap tires from piles around the state, some of them decades old.
Grants are available to deal with piles that existed before the program, and to date, the state has spent about $3 million on the program.
"We have markets for about 12 million scrap tires a year," said Joan Peck, section supervisor for the DEQ's Waste Management Division.
The law requires anybody who accumulates more than 500 tires to register with the state. An owner must acquire bonding to cover costs in case of fire or bankruptcy.
Peck said progress is being made in cleaning up an accumulation of tires around the state estimated at 20 million or more.
"We are definitely cleaning up more tires than we are accumulating, but it's going to be a slow process," she said.
Rhonda Zimmerman, chief of the DEQ's Solid Waste Management Unit, said tire disposal is changing to a market-driven system. In years past, scrap tires were considered a negative value product, something that carried a price for proper disposal.
Although demand is growing, it's still too low to push processors to search out and pay for the scrap tires piled around Michigan. That's where the state grant program helps.
Maxwell's grant will allow him to recoup the expenses of paying a processor, Huffman Rubber, to haul away thousands of tires.
To fund its scrap tire grant program, the DEQ receives a 50 cent fee on every vehicle title transfer. Some tire dealers charge a fee to dispose of old tires removed from a vehicle, but such charges are not specified in the law.
Herald-Palladium (Michigan)