At the request of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the Lawrence-Scioto Solid Waste Management District is cracking down on illegal scrap tire dumps and requiring the haulers who transport scrap tires to be licensed.
"The Ohio EPA has been funding the cleanup of scrap tire dumps since the 1980s, but it's still a monumental problem," said Dan Palmer, executive director of the local solid waste district.
"Ohio generates 12 million scrap tires per year," Palmer said Tuesday. "Each year, the state pays to clean up 100,000 scrap tires. We clean one of these illegal tire dumps up, and others appear. We think they're doing it at night."