Environmental Progress - Winter 2003

Environmental Progress : Winter 2003

Combined Effort Removes Waste Tires, Improves Landfill, Saves Money

Tire dump site was largest in state history

The IEPA's Bureau of Land recently removed approximately one million tires from a mammoth waste tire stockpile, then used the shredded material from almost half of them in place of the customary gravel in a gas venting system at a nearby landfill, the first use in Illinois of a newly emerging technology that also saved the state a significant amount of money.

Some of the two million tires that made the Danville site the state's largest known dump of waste tires.

Starting in 1993, the IEPA had negotiated with Ed Coultas, who owned and operated Coultas Recycling in Danville, to secure voluntary removal of the estimated two million waste tires at his site. That number made the operation the largest collection of waste tires ever identified in Illinois. Coultas was unable to arrange a complete removal within the allotted time period, so an Agency-funded removal action was begun. In the next nine months, more than 11,646 tons of waste tires were removed at a cost of $1,058,850.

In approximately the same timeframe, the city of Danville was wrestling with persistent problems at the inactive H & L #1 Landfill, one of 33 abandoned problem landfill sites scheduled for corrective action under the Illinois FIRST program. Due to inadequate cover on the landfill, significant amounts of leachate were being produced.

Danville in 1995 installed a leachate collection system, but the system was very expensive to maintain and the problem was expected to continue unless the landfill was properly capped.

Planned remediation efforts included installation of a proper cap, which was expected to reduce the generation of leachate but might increase generation of methane gas. A gas venting system was included in the site remediation plans. If not properly vented, pressure will build up, creating cracks in the cap and damaging the vegetative cover, leading to erosion, or allowing methane to migrate away from the landfill.

Workers add shredded tire chips to the gas venting system that will safely divert methane gas from the landfill's interior.

Gravel is usually used in venting systems, but the IEPA at two previous landfill remediations had used shredded tires in surface water drainage layers. After analysis, it was determined the tire shreds met the specifications for use in the gas venting layer and Tire Shredders Unlimited of Lincoln, Illinois, was contracted to use a mobile shredder at the Coultas site, and haul the resulting shreds to the H & L Landfill site.

More than 5,000 tons of tire shreds, the equivalent of more than 400,000 passenger tires, were used. The coordinated plan reduced the cost of the waste tire cleanup by more than a third. Using the readily available shreds instead of gravel, that would have to be purchased and hauled to the landfill, saved another $175,000. The Agency, through Illinois FIRST, spent approximately $4.5 million on this project.

The IEPA will monitor the effectiveness of the gas venting layer as well as all other aspects of the remediation project, and continues to evaluate the use of tire shreds in similar applications. Such "outside the box" solutions continue the IEPA's objective of low cost environmental responses through innovation and the promotion of more sound engineered applications for used tires.