West's Largest Tire Pile to be Cleaned Up in Two Years Thanks to Waste Board, Two Businesses

SACRAMENTO—The largest waste tire pile in the Western United States should be completely cleaned up by the end of 1999 thanks to an innovative and comprehensive agreement between the California Integrated Waste Management Board and two Stanislaus County businesses.

Under terms of the agreement announced today, the Modesto Energy Limited Partnership (MELP) energy plant near Westley, about 25 miles southwest of Modesto, will burn 4 million of the estimated 6 million tires at the adjacent Oxford Tire Recycling (OTR) pile. OTR will then clean up the remaining tires.

Waste Board Chairman Daniel G. Pennington hailed the agreement, completed after months of negotiations, saying the potential environmental consequences made it imperative for the State to act.

"Millions of waste tires have been stockpiled in the rugged canyons just west of Interstate 5 for more than 30 years, posing a significant threat to north-south transportation, the state's electrical grid - and Southern California's water supply," Pennington said. "Resolving this potential crisis has been one of our top priorities at the Board, and I'm extremely pleased that all sides have worked in good faith to reach this agreement."

Complicating an agreement were the difficult financial situations of MELP and the operator of the pile, Oxford Tire Recycling. MELP has been burning tires to produce electricity since the mid-1980s, but has been heavily subsidized by Pacific Gas and Electric under a contract struck at a time when it appeared that energy prices would escalate sharply. With the pending deregulation of the electric power industry, that subsidy is set to expire in September, and without short-term financial assistance, the facility's owners warned they would have no choice but to shut down.

To ensure that MELP remains in operation, the Board agreed to pay $1.7 million to the company to burn 4,000,000 tires during the next 10 to 14 months. Of that, $640,000 will be contributed by OTR, bringing the State's net cost down to just under $1.1 million. MELP will be able to gradually increase shipments of waste tires from other sources during that timeframe, and once it has met its obligations, will be able to accept tires from any source. Waste tire haulers are paid by tire stores to haul away customers' old tires, and in turn pay landfills or end users such as MELP a fee to dispose of them. Those fees, plus the money earned by selling electricity, should allow the company to remain profitable in the future.

During the past several months, MELP has been taking tires from the adjacent OTR pile but has not been getting paid for them, contributing to the company's financial problems.

OTR, meanwhile, has agreed to complete the cleanup to the Waste Board's satisfaction within 14 months after the 4 million tires are disposed of. Under terms of the separate agreement with the Board, the owners of the company restructured their closure fund to ensure that the funds to complete the cleanup are available. State law requires all waste facilities to maintain adequate closure funds.

In exchange for ensuring that the closure fund is adequate and guaranteed, the Board will not revoke OTR's waste tire facility permit, and the company will continue its tire hauling operations. Besides contributing $640,000 in cash to the Board to reduce the taxpayers' costs for the MELP agreement, OTR has set aside $1 million to pay to remove the estimated 2 million tires that will remain on the site. The company also will be able to continue its waste tire hauling business, but will not be able to bring any more tires to the Westley site.

Pennington noted that by working to keep both MELP and OTR operational, the cost to the State to remove all 6 million tires should be just over $1 million - approximately 18 cents per tire. In contrast, the average cost of recent Board-funded cleanups of other, smaller tire piles is approximately $1.30 per tire.

"If we had not been able to reach these agreements with MELP and OTR, the costs would have totaled several million dollars and the cleanup would have been postponed for years," Pennington said.

The tire pile began during the late 1950s and early 1960s, as many of the old waste tire piles around California did, because the owner of the land believed that some day they would be a valuable commodity. The Westley pile grew to be by far the largest repository of old tires in the Western U.S. and one of the four or five largest in the entire country.

Because of its location adjacent to Interstate 5 and the California Aqueduct, a major, uncontrolled fire at the facility could cause oils produced by burning tires to spread across the freeway and into the canal, as well as destroy PG&E's major north-south electrical transmission lines which run directly overhead. Major tire pile fires can often burn for weeks, and then smoulder underground for many months. Besides the immediate threats, a major fire would cause severe air pollution problems and possible groundwater contamination in the San Joaquin Valley and could interfere with airplane traffic into San Francisco International Airport.

The six-member Integrated Waste Management Board is responsible for protecting the public's health and safety and the environment through management of the 46 million tons of solid waste generated in California each year. The Board's mandate is to work in partnership with local government, industry, and the public to achieve a 50 percent reduction in waste disposed by the year 2000, while ensuring environmentally safe landfill disposal capacity.

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