The On-going Quandry with Quarries

Tires Getting Just Too Tiresome!

By Tom Degen

Quarries First. Judiciary Subcommittee A of the West Virginia State Legislature met on Sunday, August 15, 1999. Rocky Parsons, Assistant Chief, Office of Mining & Reclamation, showed slides of various quarries, and answered questions. He also submitted a letter that presented the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) concerns and objectives concerning quarry legislation. Briefly, these are:

While many of these sound good, the devil is in the details, and many disagreements exist on how these would be implemented. For example, there is merit to the idea of site specific plans, but site specific plans provide the opportunity to write in what some consider too much discretion on the director’s (and the applicant’s) behalf. Grandfathering of only existing disturbed areas is great, but only requiring pre-blast surveys on new permits essentially means very few pre- blast surveys would be required. Public hearings on significant revisions sounds good, but who gets to request a hearing? How one defines significant revisions will have a great effect on that. Water rights replacement will probably not happen without a presumption of liability similar to that in the oil and gas law.

Rocky said the agency’s perspective on reclamation requirements was that it just wanted the sites re-vegetated and stabilized. Although at one point he said it is possible to eliminate highwalls, he later said that the agency was not advocating that.

Funding issues raised during the meeting included the low permit fees, low bonding and insurance requirements, and whether to fund reclamation from a bond pool or a per ton severance tax.

According to Rocky, there are 130 sites covering 11,000 acres in West Virginia. Last year, 16 million tons of rock were quarried. When asked how many counties these quarries were in, he said that they were pretty well distributed. When asked how many abandoned sites there were, Rocky said he didn’t know, that they were everywhere, and that many of them are small.

I have heard that staff will be working on a draft bill for the next interim session, so I would urge anyone with concerns to make them known to the committee members, especially the co-chairs, Senator Snyder and Delegate Linch.

Now Tires (Environmentalists ignored). Dick Cooke, of the Office of Waste Management (OWM), reported on a meeting with representatives from the U S Environmentl protection Agency (EPA) and various stakeholders in the tire issue. Dick Cooke neglected to invite me to the meeting. Pam Nixon, the environmental advocate, notified me of it the day before, but I could not make the meeting on such short notice. It seems that OWM doesn’t think that solid waste authorities or environmentalists are stakeholders in what is obviously a waste issue. However, representatives of the Division of Highways, Corrections, Health, Emergency Services, the Solid Waste Management Board, the Judiciary Committees, and the Governor’s office attended. [bold & italics added by editor]

EPA has authority under section 7003 of RCRA, the federal waste management act, to order that tire piles be cleaned up, and then initiate legal actions to recover the costs. Tire manufacturers, dealers, retailers, and haulers would be the target of those actions. EPA indicated that they don’t want to do that, but would be building a case and perhaps next year they would.

Funding for tire pile cleanup seems to be a big problem. The committee doesn’t want to impose new taxes or fees, yet there is no avoiding the fact that it will cost money to clean them up. Responding to last month’s request for an estimate of how much it would cost to build a tire monofill on the site of the Putnam County tire pile, Dick Cooke reported that a rough estimate would be $125,000 per acre. Mr. Cooke also reported that it costs roughly $2.00 per tire to clean up tire piles. Senator Ross repeatedly made the point that the electric power generating facilities and Capitol Cement should be paying for tires since tires are "fuel," but the response was consistent that these facilities wanted to be paid to burn tires.

A representative from Capitol Cement gave a report on the status of their efforts to burn tires. The equipment they purchased is not working properly and no tires are being burned at the present time. Their "tire cannon" uses compressed air to shoot tires out into the kiln, and won’t work if the tires are cut, split, or too dirty. The machine is only capable of handling 13-16 inch tires. Eventually they expect to be able to burn three and a half to four million tires per year, from tire dealers and other state’s stockpiles. He anticipates that perhaps 400,000 to 500,000 tires from West Virginia could be accommodated.

Delegate Johnson asked what the state would get in return if it gives tax credits for equipment. The response was that tire piles would get cleaned up. However, Dick Cooke pointed out that because the tire cannon needs clean, whole tires from a particular size range, Capitol Cement could only handle about 20% of the tires that would come from tire piles. The fact that Capitol Cement is in the Eastern Panhandle also will limit the amount of West Virginia tires it can burn because of shipping costs.

Capitol Cement intends to burn tires regardless of what West Virginia decides to do. Virginia pays $22.50 per ton to end-users that use tires from dealers, and $50.00 per ton to end-users that use tires from tire piles (currently Capitol Cement pays $30-35 per ton for coal). Tire dealers in Maryland pay to have tires incinerated in the Baltimore trash incinerator, and would pay Capitol Cement to take them.

When asked if the DEP was cooperating with facilities that want to burn tires, Dick Cooke said the agency is cooperating totally, it is not even requiring permits! [bold added by editor]

Although it was not brought up in committee, a memo submitted to the committee from Loretta Haddy, Director of the Division of Surveillance and Disease Control in the Department of Health and Human Resources dated July 29, 1999 stated in part:

"After conferring with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I don’t think that tire piles pose a significant risk for LaCrosse Encephalitis (LAC). Generally, they are not in a woods that supports the LAC cycle."

It is disappointing to hear the same discussions of whether facilities should pay or charge to burn tires, framed by extremely suspect claims that waste tires are a "fuel" that burns cleaner than coal. Those discussions are advanced by a distinct minority of the committee, while the rest of the members are quiet. It seems to me that the committee is foundering over what to do with tires.

Many potential uses for waste tires. As I walked across the roof of the capitol building on my way to the legislators’ offices, I noticed that the roof was being replaced. The material being used is rubber, widely considered to be the best roofing material according to my friends in the roofing business. When I was working on my truck last week, I noticed there are rubber pieces in the fender wells to deflect mud. On my way home, I drove through a stretch of interstate that was being repaved. When the little country road that I live on was repaved earlier this year, the roadbase was built up to widen the road. When I bought tires for my truck, I couldn’t help but notice that they are made from rubber.

I know that the technology exists to use rubber from tires in all of these applications, yet I wondered how much recycled rubber from tires was actually in these products.

When I got home, I wiped my feet on our doormat that is made from strips of rubber cut from tires. The facility that makes these is operated by the solid waste authority of which I am a member, and also makes bed liners for trucks, speed bumps for parking lots, and playground equipment out of the same material. The fledgling operation is in trouble due to the fact that the grant programs that made it possible are drying up.

The answers of what to do with tires are all around us. Please contact the committee members and suggest to them that they can use various combinations of requirements, grants, and incentives to encourage these proactive uses. I think they would appreciate the help.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me, Tom Degen, at (304) 655-8651, e-mail tdegen@wvwise.org .

Joint Judiciary Subcommittee A Membership for 1999 Interims

Senate Members

Fanning, John Pat

Hunter, John Blair

Kessler, Jeffrey

McCabe, Brooks

McKenzie, R. Andy

Oliverio, Michael A.

Ross, Michael

Snyder, Herb, Co-Chair

Wooton, William R., ex officio

Counsel, Rita Pauley

House Members

Dalton, Sammy D.

Faircloth, Larry V.

Johnson, Arley R.

Linch, Larry A., Co-Chair

Mahan, Virginia

Pino, John

Smirl, Jody G.

Staton, Rick, ex officio

Webb, Charles "Rusty"

Counsel, Joe Altizer