Driving through the backroads of Lowndes County, you’re likely to see fields of grass, an occasional cow pasture and people enjoying their front porches.
You might also see tires, maybe even hundreds of them at a time.
For the last two months, supervisors have been trying to nail down a solution to the county’s problem with illegal tire dumping. Several dump sites have popped up on private properties throughout the county, including off Nobel Lane, Golding Road and Harrison Road.
Despite spaces going from empty to covered with anywhere from 500 to 1,000 tires overnight, officials are not sure who is doing the dumping.
“All we know is that they’re being dumped in bulk, like hundreds and hundred at a time,” District 3 Supervisor Andy Williamson told The Dispatch on Thursday.
Sheriff Eddie Hawkins said the scale of the dumping suggests it’s not random or an individual.
“We’ve had a couple of cases where we’ve gone in and cleaned up these sites, and the next day, somebody’s out there dumping more tires,” he said. “We just haven’t caught the people making the illegal dumps.”
Hawkins said the dumping is happening on private property, meaning the county has to go through legal hurdles before it can clean up a site.
“Long story short, it’s expensive to collect and clean these up for the property owners because the county cannot go on private property to remove debris or anything like that, so it becomes a problem,” he said.
The proper process
The quantity of old tires leads Hawkins and supervisors to believe the dumping could possibly be connected to local tire shops, or at least, a company whose function requires disposing of hundreds of tires at a time.
Hawkins said most large commercial tire companies have a process for disposing of tires that includes keeping a record of where the tires go for disposal.
Lowndes County Radial Tire sends old tires to Liberty Tire Recycling in Saltillo. Owner Jeremy Lumsden said his company is charged a monthly fee to keep a trailer at the shop to fill with old tires. Once the trailer fills up every four to six weeks, the company switches it out and takes the old tires to be recycled.
It’s an expensive routine, especially with the additional payment based on the weight of the trailer when the company takes it back. Lumsden said it runs him about $1,700 each time.
“So you do that six or eight times a year, maybe more than that (depending) on how good the year is, how many junk tires you’re taking off, (and) it can get pretty expensive,” he said.
Filling the 53-foot trailer at Bates Tire Center that holds between 10 and 13 tons usually takes about a month, Owner Stan Bates said. The service costs about $200 for each ton of tires, plus a transfer charge for bringing an empty trailer and taking the full one back to Saltillo.
“That usually entails about every time one of these trailers leaves full of scrap tires, it’s about $2,300, and it’s an every three to four week process that we’re getting a new trailer,” Bates told The Dispatch on Friday.
Both Bates and Lumsden said they charge customers disposal fees to try and recuperate the costs.
That financial burden, Hawkins said, may make it more enticing for local shop owners to go with an individual or small company offering cut-rate hauling services.
“What happens is you get some of these fly-by-night companies that come in and say, ‘Hey, you’re charging $4 a tire to dispose of these tires. We’ll do it for $2,’” Hawkins said. “Then they’ll load all the tires up on their trailer. Then they’ll take those tires somewhere and they’ll dump them on private property. … The business owners think they’re being disposed of properly when they’re not.”
Hawkins said the sheriff’s office employs a litter control officer who is responsible for investigating the illegal dumping, but so far, there hasn’t been much luck in identifying the dumpers.
Placing surveillance cameras at the site, at least when it’s on private property, would have to be done at the property owner’s discretion, Hawkins said. Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston would not confirm whether the county is surveilling dump sites on county-owned roads.
Making an example
Supervisors are working on solutions for enforcing illegal dumping, including a possible ordinance creating heftier fines for individuals caught dumping. Hawkins hopes that would get the message across.
“If they are breaking the law, if they are doing illegal dumping, we want to investigate it and be able to prosecute the ones that are doing this to set an example to keep this from happening,” he said.
Hairston said the board is trying to determine what penalties state law prescribes for illegal dumping and whether it can be prosecuted.
“I would like to see that happen just because I think we do need to make an example out of somebody,” he said. “… We may not have to do an ordinance if there’s already a state law on the books that allows it to be charged as a felony, so we do have to look into that.”
According to state code, penalties for dumping solid wastes illegally start with a fine if the waste weighs less than 15 pounds. Once the weight exceeds 15 pounds, the offender is guilty of a misdemeanor and has to pay a fine between $100 and $1,000. If the disposal is for commercial purposes or if it exceeds 500 pounds, the offender can be charged with a felony and subject to a fine between $500 and $50,000.
The county is also considering more convenient options for people to dispose of tires to try and cut back the dumps on private property. Hairston said a company is interested in operating a standalone collection site somewhere in the county. Supervisors are just trying to decide where it can be located, he said.
“Maybe having some collection sites around would help with that,” he said. “If they know it’s there, know it’s available, (people) are less inclined to dump it somewhere.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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