SYCAMORE, Ohio (June 24)—Soil and groundwater remediation at the Kirby's Tire Recycling Inc. scrap tire site near Sycamore could go on for years beyond the August 2006 deadline the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has set for removing all above-ground tires at the site, according to the man in charge of soil and groundwater remediation at the site.
"The Ohio EPA set its priority on removing the above-ground tires, to prevent any further arson at the site," said Don Wilkes, project manager at the Kirby site for August Mack Environmental Inc., which holds the state contract for cleaning up the water and soil there.
But even after those tires are removed, Wilkes said, August Mack can't begin its work in earnest until the buried tires at the site—which the Ohio EPA estimates at 7 million to 8 million—are removed. At this point, August Mack is pumping 250,000 gallons of contaminated groundwater a month to prevent it from spreading to adjacent land, Wilkes said.
There were an estimated 30 million to 50 million tires at the Kirby site in August 1999 when someone deliberately set fire to a portion of the pile, scorching some 6 million tires on 18 of the site's 140 acres.