Arkansas district vows sweep of illegal tire dumps

Ex-enforcer takes over as its director

Map showing the location of Clarksville and Knoxville, Arkansas.
Map showing the location of Clarksville and Knoxville, Arkansas.

The West River Valley Regional Solid Waste Management District will figure out how to get rid of the hundreds of thousands of scrap tires the district has piled up illegally in Johnson County, district board Chairman Jimmy Hart said.

The district recently hired Justin Sparrow as its new director. Sparrow is the former Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality inspector who has written up the district for violating environmental regulations 10 times since 2014.

"It's a new day," said Hart, who also serves as county judge for Conway County. "It's a new operation. It's kind of like starting all over again."

Even as the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has been pressed by lawmakers on the efficacy of its waste tire program, one of the state's publicly funded regional solid waste districts -- West River Valley -- has harbored two illegal dumps of about 600,000 scrap tires for more than two years on property in Johnson County.

One of those dumps, off Arkansas 164, neighbors a Clarksville soccer field. Another is located in Knoxville.

Illegal tire dumps can attract insects and rodents and are particularly hazardous if they catch fire. Tire fires are difficult to put out, and chemicals that make up the tires can leak into the ground and create contamination. Pitts Road in south Pulaski County was the site of a tire fire last fall at an illegal dump site of tens of thousands of tires.

Department officials, who have argued for more oversight of the state's waste tire program, recently announced an initiative with the Arkansas Department of Health to reduce tire dumps in the state in an effort to reduce breeding grounds for mosquitoes and fight the spread of the Zika virus. The virus is spread by certain types of mosquitoes and has caused concern among public health officials primarily because of the link between infections in pregnant women and children born with microcephaly -- unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains.

The illegal dumps, among other financial and infrastructure issues, prompted the resignation in April of former Director Tim Lewellyn and the firing of former assistant director Frank Baker, along with an Arkansas State Police investigation of the district's operations. The results of that investigation, which was requested by the district's board, are with local prosecuting attorney Bruce Wilson for review.

The district hired Sparrow as its director July 5. During his time with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, Sparrow wrote up the district -- which receives its funding from the department but is locally operated -- for waste tire dumps first at the Johnson County landfill and now at the site off Arkansas 164.

Another dump in Knoxville is not regularly inspected by the department because it doesn't have a permit. It did, however, receive a complaint in early 2015 that 75,000 waste tires were being kept on the property. The department's ensuing inspection noted that staff members had visited the site several times in 2014 to "assess the district's plans to process these waste tires."

Sparrow estimates that about 300,000 tires are located at each site now. The sites have not been cleaned up, and officials are still searching for a way to properly dispose of all of the tires.

The district, also known as GreenSource Recycling, has a permit for a waste tire processing facility at its 24087 Arkansas 164 warehouse, but it's limited to 725 tons -- or 66,000 regular car tires, if they weigh 22 pounds each -- to be kept indoors or protected outdoors with a waterproof tarp and surface-water runoff controls to prevent pollution and reduce the risk of a tire fire.

A quarterly inspection in February estimated about 30,000 tires stored outside the warehouse are not covered with a tarp or surrounded by surface-water runoff controls. The same site is also a collection center, which is limited by permit and law to 3,000 loose tires or 10,000 compacted and baled tires stored on-site. A site that is neither a collection nor a processing facility is limited to 1,000 tires on site, according to department regulations.

An August 2015 inspection of the Arkansas 164 warehouse indicates a fire occurred on the side of the warehouse last summer that was extinguished by a local volunteer fire department.

By contract, the Department of Environmental Quality is not liable for the proper operation of the facilities.

A person who violated a department regulation can be convicted of a misdemeanor, according to the Solid Waste Management Act.

In May 2015, the department entered into a consent administrative order with the district over the Knoxville tire dump. The order stated that the district would not add any waste or processed tires to the dump and would "immediately" secure financing to dispose of the estimated 750 tons of waste tires at the dump.

The order stipulated that it had to be done by June 1. If the district did not comply, it was subject to a fine of $100 per day from the first through the 14th day of noncompliance, a fine of $500 per day for the 15th through the 30th day of noncompliance and a fine of $1,000 per day for each day after 30 days of noncompliance.

Those penalties have not been levied against the district, and Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh said the department would continue to work with the district to make sure the tires are properly disposed of.

Recently, the district stopped receiving tires from other counties in Arkansas via its contracts. The East Arkansas Regional Solid Waste Management Districts is now sending its tires to Liberty Tire Recycling in Memphis, which charges $150 per ton for the tires to transport them to Tupelo, Miss. The district chose that over a slightly higher bid from Little Rock company Davis Rubber. West River Valley, which had taken tires from East Arkansas Regional, charged the district only $108, according to East Arkansas Regional Solid Waste Management District Director Melissa Rivers.

Sparrow said that machinery at the district's processing site in Clarksville, which went out of operation for six weeks earlier this year with no money to fix it, is back up and running and processing tires after grants from the department and general improvement funds from area state legislators. Work is not being done at the Knoxville site yet, he said.

"A lot of what we're limited by is moving equipment from this site to this Knoxville site," Sparrow said.

Other tire districts, such as the Pulaski County Waste Tire Inter-District, recycle tires into materials such as fuel or crumb rubber. Some districts shred tires and landfill them or place them in a monofill, which is an underground facility for storing tires.

West River Valley has attempted to recycle the tires and sell the processed materials, an endeavor that Keogh said became a challenge when the district failed to collect adequate fee amounts or fees at all from certain locations.

West River Valley's scrap tire program challenges exist in large part because of its former district management, Department of Environmental Quality and district officials have said. But the district's problems were compounded by issues in the state's waste tire program that could be fixed in the future, they said.

Waste tire dumps and the state's waste tire program have been a topic of discussion since an illegal dump in Pulaski County caught fire in October, prompting four volunteer fire departments and crews from several other city, county and state agencies to fight the blaze for several hours.

The joint Public Health, Welfare and Labor committee has met to discuss waste tires three times since then.

States try to keep tires out of landfills because they don't decompose. Tires can be placed into landfills if they are shredded first.

In Arkansas, the waste tire program is funded through a portion of fees attached to the sale of new tires: $2 for car tires and $5 for truck tires. The Department of Environmental Quality collects its portion of those fees and disburses them to each of the state's 11 waste tire management districts to collect, transport, recycle or dispose of waste tires.

The department disburses those funds through a formula half-based on population and half-based on the number of tires the districts report processing, Keogh said. The department can't adjust or withhold the funds based on a district's performance, Keogh said.

Some tire dealers collect used tires with the intention of selling them, Keogh said at a hearing in November. If they can't sell them, they have to pay $2 to get the tire processed again for disposal. Many choose not to pay that fee and instead dump tires illegally, she said.

Additionally, the fees are charged on tires with the idea that a person is getting rid of old tires when buying new ones, department officials said. Customers buy new tires and dispose of the old ones, which the new tire fees are supposed to pay for. But sometimes people buy used tires to replace old tires and a fee for disposal is not charged for those used tires.

The West River Valley district needs to find a way to charge a fee for those tires instead of taking them for free, Hart said. Added income could improve the district's situation, he said.

The district has received $700,000 from the department in the past 2½ years to help with its operations, according to Rep. Lanny Fite, R-Benton. Fite is a former Saline County judge and Pulaski Waste Tire Inter-District board member who has repeatedly brought issues related to the state's waste tire program before the Legislature's joint Public Health, Welfare and Labor committee.

Department Law and Policy Senior Associate Director Julie Chapman said that, legally, the department has to prioritize extra support grant funding to districts that are determined to be in the greatest need. In 2015, West River Valley applied for it more than any other district and received 94 percent of what was available, Chapman said. The department this year has asked West River Valley to present business plans with its funding requests.

Another issue, Keogh has noted, is the need for more oversight of the districts. She noted that West River Valley's district board was in the dark about the district's issues for too long.

"I think they found themselves to feel like there could be a lot more accountability," she said, adding that she wants to see whether the Legislature can make improvements in the coming legislative session.

Hart said the West River Valley district board, made up of 17 mayors and county judges across nine counties in western Arkansas, first learned of the district's issues about two weeks before Lewellyn resigned as director in April. The board has been meeting every week since.

Records of board meeting minutes requested by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette indicate Lewellyn's resignation and Baker's firing came after discussions about tens of thousands of dollars being owed to contractors, the district paying for an employee's husband's separate insurance and the purchase of two new sport utility vehicles with grant money intended for one fuel-efficient car. Additional findings discussed during executive sessions were not included in the minutes.

Hart said that prior to April, district board members depended "heavily on management," given how specialized the subject area is. Going forward, he said he expects the board to run differently.

"Hopefully what we'll see ... [is a] much more involved and engaged board," he said.

Metro on 07/25/2016

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