RICHMOND, Va. (March 9) — A bill to maintain Virginia´s $1-per-tire scrap tire fee until June 30, 2008, has overwhelmingly passed both the state Senate and House.
The bill has been signed by both the Speaker of the House and the president of the Senate, and will go to Gov. Tim Kaine´s desk as soon as it has been enrolled, said Melissa Porterfield, air and water policy manager at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
Without the bill, the fee that Virginia charges on the sale of each new tire in the commonwealth would revert to the original level of 50 cents, which the DEQ said would leave them short of scrap tire cleanup funds at a crucial time.
According to its end-year 2005 report to the assembly, the DEQ estimates there are 136 scrap tire sites containing 2½-3 million tires left in Virginia, and it will cost an estimated $6 million to clean them up.