An Atlanta task force could make recommendations as soon as next month on how authorities should crack down on illegal tire dumping, which has created mountains of tires in creeks, in abandoned lots in some of the city's most troubled neighborhoods and on at least two chunks of the Beltline route.
Among the options: night-vision surveillance cameras; decals to identify legitimate tire haulers' trucks; manifests that would help track tires all the way to recycling plants; and stiffer fines of $1,000 per day for illegal dumping.
"Out on the streets, people are saying there are tires everywhere, every day," said Joyce Sheperd, who represents part of southeast Atlanta on the City Council. "We're sick of this, and we want to do something about it."
But without changes to mandate that money collected from tire-buyers for clean-up and anti-dumping enforcement be spent on those tasks, residents worry that the tires will just keep coming back. Some of the industrial-scale dumping on abandoned lots, behind apartment complexes, in warehouses and even in self-storage units is believed to be the work of haulers who come from miles around.
"This issue has not gone away for us," said Demarcus Peters, who works with the English Avenue Neighborhood Association. "We know we have to stay on it, or we'll have to clean up the same places over and over."
Piled up by the thousands in some spots, tires are mosquito-attracting signs of blight, environmental squalor and declining property values.
Residents and community leaders say unethical haulers are picking up tires from auto shops and dumping them to avoid a recycling fee, which can run about $1.50 per tire. One man was arrested and charged with dumping 7,500 tires in a Henry County field in 2010, but relatively few people have gone to jail for violating anti-dumping statutes.
In Atlanta, tire dumpers can incur fines between $250 and $1,000, but that is often left to the discretion of a judge, Sheperd said.
The state estimates that 1 million tires were illegally dumped in Georgia in 2010, with only a tenth of those eventually removed and recycled. The problem isn't confined to the city. Volunteers and staff in Gwinnett County collected seven tons of tires in two sweeps late last year.
Volunteers recently collected more than 1,000 tires from two Beltline sites. Vehicle barriers were installed at entrances that were attracting illegal haulers.
A slumping economy means less money for enforcement and also more temptation for automotive shops to do business with shady operators, said Dewey Grantham Jr., regional manager for Liberty Tire Recycling.
"Everyone is looking to save money, and looking to cut corners," Grantham said. "If someone shows up at their door offering a lower rate, it's a temptation. It's a recipe for disaster."
The state collects $1 on each new tire sold, and according to a 1992 law, the money is supposed to go to the Solid Waste Trust Fund for cleaning up illegal scrap tire piles and abandoned landfills, as well as recycling and waste reduction programs. But for years, much of the roughly $6 million generate annually by that fee has instead gone into the state's general fund.
A bill in the General Assembly this year would have required the state to spend the fees for the intended purpose, or scale back the levy. The measure was gutted in a Senate committee and failed.
Since then, Atlanta leaders have mulled tougher regulations.
The task force may recommend that City Council tighten loopholes that make enforcement difficult. An example: the city's code enforcement personnel can cite property owners who have tire dumps on their property, but they are not authorized to remove tires from private property.
Tony Torrence, a community advocate in Vine City and English Avenue neighborhoods, said tire dumping is just one of the environmental hazards in the low-income areas near the Georgia Dome. Tires and the standing water they hold could harbor rodents, mosquitoes and West Nile virus. The 50 percent vacancy rate in the English Avenue community encourages bad operators to dump trash and tires in vacant lots, he said.
"We already know it's a high-risk community," Torrence said. "It's serious environmental injustice. We need to expose this."
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