It’s a nation-wide problem but in Colorado it’s an even bigger issue. The state is home to about 40% of all waste tires in the entire country.
"Colorado is known as the tire dumping grounds for the United States," said Representative Marsha Looper of House District 49.
The tire dump in Midway near I-25 is home to 30,000,000 tires, and Looper says it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
"If this dump were to catch fire, there is an estimation that it would take as much as 500 million dollars to put it out," she said. "Water may be contaminated, there’s 80 quarts of oil in each tire."
Do the math and the numbers are astonishing.
There are 20 gallons of water in 80 quarts, if you multiply that by the 30,000,000 tires in the monofill and you get a mere 600,000,000 gallons of oil. That’s enough to fill about 1,000 olympic-sized swimming pools.
"This is a public hazard, a public catastrophe waiting to happen," said Representative Dianne Primavera, of House District 33.
Primavera and Looper invited The Transportation Review Committee to see the site Monday. Their goal is to gain momentum at the state level to create new legislation that would require waste tire sites, like the one at Midway to be cleaned up and done away with.
"We need to strengthen up the laws," said Carl Tatum, the Chief of the Hanover Fire Protection District. Tatum says he has feared problems happening at the site for years.
"We need to get more state legislators down here to see what we have to deal with," he said.
A company called GCC has recently purchased the tire waste site and so far, officials say they have been making all of the right moves to get the site in compliance with the law. GCC officials have long term plans to recylce the 30 million tires at the site for energy to run a cement plant in Florence. (Tire Review/Akron)
