Dive Brief:

• Ohio's Canton City Health Department and some property owners are on a mission to end illegal tire dumping on outdoor properties and inside buildings where hundreds of tires have stockpiled, which has led to three felony arrests for open dumping or neglecting to register a transporter. The municipality is engaged in an investigation and will pursue criminal charges whenever more than 2,000 tires are dumped, as reported in CantonRep.com. 
• The Ohio EPA is about to embark in two cleanup projects including one in Canton where about 650 tires were dumped. Previously, the state hauled tires from 13 other Canton sites between late 2011 and 2015.
• Cleanup costs are about $509,000 a year and individuals or agencies can apply for assistance, funded by a $3.6 million annual tax on new tires, and a local grant if they qualify financially and have at least 100 illegally dumped tires on their property.

Dive Insight:

Dumped tires present potential health and safety risks. They burn, collect, water and attract disease-spreading mosquitoes, becoming what Dina Pierce of the Ohio EPA called “"breeding grounds."

Illegal dumping of wasted tires has been a problem in Louisiana,  Arkansas, and elsewhere. A very few states are investing big to curb the problem, even by putting the tires to use.  It’s a problem that has especially exploded in Canton, which some speculate may be tied to low sales from scrap metal, driving illegal haulers to find alternative money-making ideas, including collecting tires for an estimated $2 each, and $10 for a semi truck tire, then dumping them.

Canton City Health Department officials say their investigation has uncovered tires in houses left by renters; one house was found with roughly 300 tires in it. Commercial properties have been targeted, too. Landlord Michael King has been so inundated that he told CantonRep, "I’m going to put security cameras up because I’m just sick of the idea of them ... adding to the pile."  King has actually parked his car and staked out, which led to one of the three felony cases.

Businesses are not mandated to check a hauler’s license, though state and local officials engaged in an investigation to identify offenders expect a paper trail of receipts to show proper disposal.

"That proves to us they’re not just dumping them over the hill somewhere and collecting the fee from people to haul away their tires. That’s the purpose of the licensing really," said Pierce to CantonRep.