In an effort to combat mosquitoes, as well as littering, the city of Waco held a rare midsummer Waco scrap tyre collection day Saturday.
“The height of summer is the prime breeding season for mosquitoes, and one of their favorite breeding spots is water standing in discarded tyres,” said Anna Dunbar, outreach and recycling administrator for the city’s Solid Waste Services Department. “So we wanted to help with that problem by reducing the number of tyres lying around.”
The city’s Solid Waste Services Department usually holds the collection days in May and November to give residents a chance to turn tyres in without paying the usual US$2.50 fee for small tyres.
The events get varied results. One recent collection day pulled in about 1,000, another 500.
The unusually wet spring lingered well into June. It included record rainfall for the month of May in McLennan County, compounding the standing water problem and prompting the midsummer collection day.
Officials were distributing a flier from the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District on prevention of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus.
Dunbar was supervising a half dozen city employees in greeting residents who dropped tyres off and keeping records, while eight county jail trusties supervised by Deputy Sheriffs Robert Young and Kyle Lee unloaded tyres and packed them into a semi trailer to be taken to Liberty Tyre Recycling of Midlothian. There, the metal will be removed and the tyres ground into crumbs to be used for industrial fuel.
Young and Lee are on contract from the county to the City of Waco as an environmental crimes investigation unit. Young said use of the jail trusties saves the city US$7 that each pound would cost if city employees did all the work.
In a morning session from 8 a.m. to noon at the Solid Waste Services headquarters on Schroeder Drive, the team collected 688 tyres from 73 households.
Some people brought in tyres other than their own. Chris Lunday said this was his first time to participate in a collection day, but he had picked up tyres from the side of the road.
“I’ll participate in collection days as often as they have them now,” he said.
Dan Carroll brought a set of tyres from a vehicle he no longer uses.
Cleaned up
“I’m 90 years old, and I’m trying to get everything cleaned up,” he said.
People dropping off tyres had to show documents proving they were Waco utility customers. Tyres had to be a maximum 26 inches in diameter and removed from wheels and rims.
The Heart of Texas Council of Governments sponsors tyre collection programs in communities outside Waco.
Young pointed out that the program addresses people who balk at the fees charged to surrender tyres at the Solid Waste Services office during normal business hours.
“People dump tyres in ditches and alleys all the time,” he said. “They’re eyesores and public health hazards, and it’s illegal just to dump them.”
Under litter laws for individuals, discarding trash under five pounds is a Class C misdemeanor; litter from five to 500 pounds can draw a fine of up to US$2,000 and a jail term of six months as a Class B misdemeanor; and pitching from 500 to 1,000 pounds of trash rates a fine of up US$4,000 and a one-year jail sentence as a Class A misdemeanor. Laws against commercial dumping are even stiffer.
Lee said he and Young supervised the collection of 1.5 million pounds of illegally dumped trash last year, tyres and otherwise, and had collected 450,000 pounds so far in 2015.
“Sometimes you can find a statement or something with a name on it to help find a litterer. Detecting guilty parties dumping tyres is harder, but sometimes people will observe illegal dumping and call the police with a license plate,” he said.
“Just recently, we caught somebody dumping 4,300 pounds of shingles. They had to clean it up personally in addition to answering criminal charges,” he said. – Wacotrib.com