The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) is cleaning up nearly 7 million tires at a closed Baxter County landfill, a report by KOLR10 says. The Damco Tire Landfill closed years ago. The tires left behind created a mosquito issue and broke environmental regulations.
Weston Lee, project engineer with the department, is leading the $2 million cleanup. He says the district needed a space to dispose of tires destined for recycling and requested to have a monofill landfill.
Damco Inc., a private company, and the Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District buried 1,500 bales of tires in the landfill. The report says each bale had 100 tires in it. Damco continued to accept the tires despite reaching capacity, and ADEQ took control of it after the district attempted to file for bankruptcy to clean up the space.
Lee says in the report that the original dam structure at the landfill had to be redesigned to incorporate the increase of tires. Contractors are continuing to bale tires at the landfill despite not having a place to bury them.
Lee says the top bale of the rows will gradually step down to a three-to-one grade, which will minimize erosion from rainwater and runoff from the top of the dam.
The report says contractors are spraying mosquito repellent once per quarter to mitigate the insect issue.
Cleanup will take 10 months to complete, the report says. The tires are expected to be buried and topped with vegetation by spring 2018. Costs for the cleanup will be taken from taxpayers in six Arkansas counties and within the Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District.