Atwood Tire Pile Cleanup Begins
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
ATWOOD - By summer 2001, the 4.5 million waste tires at the G&M tire pile near Atwood are expected to be cleaned up.
Wednesday, the cleanup of the tire pile began at the seven-acre site. The pile, which weighs approximately 57,700 tons, includes truck, automobile, farm implement and airplane tires.
The contractor, TRI-Rinse Inc., from St. Louis, Mo., plans to shred the waste tires at the site and haul the material to area landfills. There, landfill operators will use it as alternative daily cover in their operations and as a substitute material for stone used for drainage in the bottom of new landfills.
TRI-Rinse expects to shred about five truckloads of tires each day, Monday through Saturday.
There are concerns about why the Indiana Department of Environmental Management chose TRI-Rinse instead of the Indiana companies that planned to recycle the waste tires.
"I was concerned about the way they went about (awarding the bid) without consulting the district," said Marsha Eikenberry Wednesday, Kosciusko County Solid Waste Management District director, at the district's board meeting. She said TRI-Rinse does have experience in cleaning up tire piles, however.
Marc Shea, a partner in Primix Corp., is another person questioning IDEM's decision.
Primix uses crumb rubber as a component in manufacturing railroad ties. His production facility is in a building a half mile from the pile.
"Basically," Shea recently told the Times-Union, "we could have supplied our own raw material."
Initially, the state was enthusiastic about Primix's plan and said they would work with the company. Later, IDEM told Shea they would have to take bids but they were still interested in the proposal. Shea said he was surprised at the outcome, as not only was his firm not chosen, but neither were other Indiana firms.
TRI-Rinse bid $75 per ton, so the cleanup will cost IDEM between $4 and $5 million dollars.
According to an IDEM spokesman, IDEM used a scoring sheet and limited the evaluation of each bid to the scores. Bids were based on criteria, including adherence to mandatory requirements, quality of approach, overall management judgment and price proposal.
According to an IDEM office memorandum, TRI-Rinse was selected, "due to its strong technical quality, a sound approach to the cleanup, abundance of workload resources, experience doing similar tire cleanups of the magnitude of G&M and a reasonable cost per ton."
TRI-Rinse also provides the recycling service for the agricultural pesticide container recycling program in Indiana, according to Eikenberry.
Garry Baker is the former owner of the pile. Indiana took control of the pile from Baker several years ago, citing it as a health and environmental hazard. [[In-content Ad]]
ATWOOD - By summer 2001, the 4.5 million waste tires at the G&M tire pile near Atwood are expected to be cleaned up.
Wednesday, the cleanup of the tire pile began at the seven-acre site. The pile, which weighs approximately 57,700 tons, includes truck, automobile, farm implement and airplane tires.
The contractor, TRI-Rinse Inc., from St. Louis, Mo., plans to shred the waste tires at the site and haul the material to area landfills. There, landfill operators will use it as alternative daily cover in their operations and as a substitute material for stone used for drainage in the bottom of new landfills.
TRI-Rinse expects to shred about five truckloads of tires each day, Monday through Saturday.
There are concerns about why the Indiana Department of Environmental Management chose TRI-Rinse instead of the Indiana companies that planned to recycle the waste tires.
"I was concerned about the way they went about (awarding the bid) without consulting the district," said Marsha Eikenberry Wednesday, Kosciusko County Solid Waste Management District director, at the district's board meeting. She said TRI-Rinse does have experience in cleaning up tire piles, however.
Marc Shea, a partner in Primix Corp., is another person questioning IDEM's decision.
Primix uses crumb rubber as a component in manufacturing railroad ties. His production facility is in a building a half mile from the pile.
"Basically," Shea recently told the Times-Union, "we could have supplied our own raw material."
Initially, the state was enthusiastic about Primix's plan and said they would work with the company. Later, IDEM told Shea they would have to take bids but they were still interested in the proposal. Shea said he was surprised at the outcome, as not only was his firm not chosen, but neither were other Indiana firms.
TRI-Rinse bid $75 per ton, so the cleanup will cost IDEM between $4 and $5 million dollars.
According to an IDEM spokesman, IDEM used a scoring sheet and limited the evaluation of each bid to the scores. Bids were based on criteria, including adherence to mandatory requirements, quality of approach, overall management judgment and price proposal.
According to an IDEM office memorandum, TRI-Rinse was selected, "due to its strong technical quality, a sound approach to the cleanup, abundance of workload resources, experience doing similar tire cleanups of the magnitude of G&M and a reasonable cost per ton."
TRI-Rinse also provides the recycling service for the agricultural pesticide container recycling program in Indiana, according to Eikenberry.
Garry Baker is the former owner of the pile. Indiana took control of the pile from Baker several years ago, citing it as a health and environmental hazard. [[In-content Ad]]