U.S.-Mexico border states fight scrap tires

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Environmental secretaries from all 10 U.S.-Mexico border states met today for the Border Governors Conference in Hollywood. They signed the Tire Initiative Letter of Understanding, which includes ‘tire pile prevention measures’ and tries to eliminate the public health risks.

Often disease-carrying pests such as rodents inhabit these tire piles. After a rainfall, mosquitoes may breed in the stagnant water collected inside tires and carry deadly diseases such as encephalitis, West Nile virus, dengue fever and malaria.

Scrap-tire fires are difficult to extinguish and can burn for weeks or months releasing thick black smoke that can contaminate the soil with oily residue, generate significant liquid waste and contaminate ground and surface water.

So far 4 million scrap tires have been removed from the U.S.-Mexico border to decrease the risk of fires and disease that they pose to border residents, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Tire Initiative is a joint partnership by the EPA and the Mexican Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. Representatives at the conference were from California, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

State and local governments on both sides of the border as well as private industry such as the U.S. Rubber Manufactures Assn., have joined in implementing Tire Initiative’s measures, according to the EPA.

Last month, the California Integrated Waste Management Board awarded $325,000 to El Cerrito in Contra Costa County and Baldwin Park to divert 21,000 waste tires from California landfills and use them to create rubberized asphalt concrete.

The EPA’s Border 2012 U.S.-Mexico Environmental Program works to protect the environment and public health for 10 states on both sides of the 2,000-mile border.

-- Tami Abdollah