The property on which a tire fire burned last week in rural southeast Little Rock had been inspected earlier this year by the state's environmental agency after a waste-tire dump complaint was filed, records show.
The Pitts Road blaze, which spread to surrounding brush, burned about 15 acres before firefighters could contain it.
Records show that two previous complaints had been filed about the property.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality received the first complaint about the 13105 Pitts Road site on Jan. 27, 2004. Investigators determined after a 10-minute inspection that the area was a salvage yard and that "several" tires at the site were not enough to classify it as a waste-tire dump site.
On May 28 of this year, the department received and investigated a second complaint about the property. Department officials visited the site on June 4 and June 17 and estimated that there were as many as 45,000 illegally dumped tires there.
The officials sent a letter to property owner Charles Calmes of Bryant and four others, warning that they had 20 days in which to respond to the letter or face enforcement action. Department officials said they never heard back from any of the five people and didn't follow up on the case until Thursday, after the fire, when they resent the letters.
The Department of Environmental Quality, along with other state and local agencies, are investigating the site as an illegal dump. The department will attempt to find the person responsible for the fire and make him clean up the site, spokesman Katherine Benenati said.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette attempts made last week to contact Calmes were unsuccessful.
According to Pulaski County records, Calmes owns 10 acres on Pitts Road -- 8 acres of which are in timber -- at an appraised value of $26,400. The records list a billing address of 3201 Andrew Drive in Bryant. Calls made to a telephone number listed at that address were not returned. That same name and billing address are listed for eight other properties in Pulaski County.
The Pitts Road fire was reported early on Monday of last week. Four volunteer fire departments and crews from several other city, county and state agencies fought the blaze for several hours.
Stacy Edwards, the illegal-dumps control officer and waste-tire program manager for the Regional Recycling and Waste Reduction District in Pulaski County, said the fire caused chemicals in the tires to break down and leak into the ground.
Benenati said any groundwater contamination would fall under Department of Environmental Quality solid waste regulations, but the site is not considered a hazardous waste dump.
Tire fires are difficult to extinguish, and illegal tire dumps are considered safety hazards. State and local officials have long fought illegal tire dumps, receiving hundreds of complaints each year about them and other illegal waste dumps.
As far as the Pitts Road tire dump is concerned, Edwards said, it's larger than an average tire dump. The area where the fire started is wooded, accessible by only one road, and covered in heaps of tires and trash, officials said.
"This is definitely one of the worst ones," Edwards said, referring to dumps in the nine-county waste-tire district in which she works.
She said tires are often dumped in remote areas by people and companies seeking to avoid paying the $2-per-tire dumping fee, which is used to support legal disposal of waste tires.
Edwards has advocated for changes to city, county and state laws to provide more supervision and regulation of old tires. Among proposals is requiring used-tire dealers to register with the state and requiring proof of proper disposal from all tire dealers.
Edwards said the only way to catch someone dumping tires illegally is if a witness reports it to police. Once tires are dumped, the property owner is statutorily responsible for cleaning them up, unless the property owner can prove that someone else is responsible.
"There's nothing I'm able to do as far as cleaning them up," Edwards said. "It's the property owner's responsibility to clean it up."
If the property owner doesn't do it over time, Edwards said, the Department of Environmental Quality's enforcement division gets involved to force the issue.
"But at this point, it was in the early stages," she said, referring to the Pitts Road site.
Metro on 10/26/2015