typed:
On 14 Mar 2007 00:45:18 -0700, "riverman" wrote:

On Mar 14, 12:16 pm, wrote:
There are a fair amount of knowledgeable (and, well, imaginative)
folks here, and I'm looking for help.

A tire recycler in Gulfport. MS got Katrina'ed, and there are tires
out the wazoo (that's a whole bunch of tires) on his property.
Long story short is that there are tires, a problem with them, and
I figured good ol' ROFF is as good a place as any to ask if anyone
has any ideas, contacts, wants to Google beyond what we've done, or
???

And for the record, I have no interest in the problem directly
beyond that as a concerned citizen. And to go even further, if
someone knows something that results in money being made, and I
somehow wind up being able to direct any of it, it goes to charity.

Thanks in advance, and all ideas welcome,
R

Google 'Crumb rubber' to find all sorts of businesses that consume
ground up tires.

Thanks, but oops...maybe I should be more specific, or at least as
specific as the information I have.

The "common" uses are known - this was a tire recycling facility.
What happened, generally and as I understand it, is that the
equipment was Katrina'ed, but the tires weren't. The owner
apparently thought insurance would replace/repair the equipment, and
on that basis, he kept accepting tires after the storm (there were
tires everywhere, plus cars being wrecked out). When the pile got
too high, the city shut him down and yanked his recycling permit.
There are now some 400-500,000 tires at the site, his insurance
company has not ponied up, and it's become a local issue.
Apparently, there's no effective way to move them to another
(distant) area, and given the on-coming fire and mosquito seasons,
it's an obvious concern. There was a company that had talked about
coming in, but apparently, that fell apart.

There was a business up here in MA that ran into a similar problem about
10-12 years ago. After a zoning change, the owner was told he's have to
remove the tires he'd been collecting for more than a decade because of the
fire hazard, about the same number you mentioned, or go to jail. You would
think with all the claimed uses for ground up old tires he wouldn't have had
a problem with the task, but all the companies interested in the tires
wanted *him* to pay for the hauling and removal. Faced with paying many
hundreds of thousands of dollars he didn't have, he ended up serving time
and losing the business.

I hope the company you mention has better luck.
--
TL,
Tim
-------------------------
http://css.sbcma.com/timj