Waste Board Approves $715,000 for Waste Tire Enforcement, Reuse Projects

SACRAMENTO—The California Integrated Waste Management Board—the State's top agency for handling the 30 million automobile tires generated annually—agreed today to spend $715,729 on local programs to enforce the State's waste tire laws, and on three projects that will demonstrate the use of waste tires on city streets, a high school running track, and in a rest stop leachfield.

"Local governments need assistance to identify and shut down the illegal tire operations up and down the state that threaten the public. In addition, it is essential to fund projects that help develop markets to reuse waste tires," said Waste Board Chairman Dan Eaton. "While local officials go after the individuals who are responsible for the 15 million waste tires piled around the state, today's funding will also allow local agencies to begin reusing the millions of tires we generate each year."

Funding was broken down as follows:

• The Board awarded $356,325 to the cities of Bakersfield, Lodi, Pittsburg, San Bernardino, and San Diego, and the counties of Butte, Los Angeles, Tulare and Yuba/Sutter, to conduct surveillance and inspection of illegal and unpermitted waste tire sites and if necessary begin enforcement actions against those responsible.
• In Sacramento County, at the closed Mather Air Force Base, the county and residential developers will use $200,000 in funding to resurface more than four miles of streets with rubberized asphalt made from 11,000 waste tires.
• At a rest stop in Westley, Stanislaus County,—near the West Coast's largest waste tire pile—a Waste Board contractor will construct a leachfield demonstration project using $109,404 in funding. Two 600-foot leachfields will be constructed. One will use traditional aggregate, while the other will be constructed with shredded waste tires.
• Runners at Analy High School in Sebastapol, Sonoma County, will soon be running on a new track made from recycled tires. The Board approved $50,000 to partially fund construction of this track that will be made with waste tires. In addition, the school district will also be looking at other waste reduction and reuse practices as part of the high school's renovation of its athletic facilities.

Funding for all the projects comes from the State's Waste Tire Management Account, which receives funding directly from the 25-cent fee consumers pay for each new tire purchased in California. In April, the Waste Board recommended to the Legislature that the State increase the fee to up to $2 per tire so the State can increase cleanup operations of illegal tire stockpiles and develop sustainable markets for the waste tires generated each year. The Board is scheduled to discuss and adopt its final recommendations to Governor Gray Davis and the Legislature at its June 9 meeting. The comprehensive final report on the waste tire issue is due to the Legislature on June 30, 1999.

The six-member Integrated Waste Management Board is responsible for protecting the public's health and safety and the environment through management of the estimated 56 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. Currently, California's diversion rate is at an all-time high of 33 percent.

The Waste Board is one of six boards and departments within the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA).

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