The grass and woods fires that plagued the state this spring had one state legislator worried about the potential for an environmental disaster.

Rep. Terrence McKenney, R-Cumberland, wrote an opinion column in a southern Maine newspaper this month, comparing the possibility of a grass fire igniting an old tire pile in Maine with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

“Imagine if the same amount of toxicity from Exxon Valdez was released from a plume of thick, choking black smoke into the air that you and your children breathe,” McKenney wrote. “That is the impact that would be felt in Maine if the 10 million abandoned tires at an illegal tire dump in Bowdoin were to catch fire.”

While not denying that a tire pile fire would be disastrous, Bill Butler of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection believes McKenney’s scenario is much less likely today than just five years ago.

Butler, who is the unofficial expert in tire pile clean up at DEP, said a legislative initiative in 1996 has substantially reduced the number of old tire piles around the state.

“It was one of the very top mandates in the solid waste program,” he said.

In 1996, there were five stockpiles of about 1 million tires each. All but one – in the Sagadahoc County town of Bowdoin – have been eliminated.

In 1996, DEP estimated there were between 22 million and 40 million old tires lying in piles at municipal landfills and at private, illegal dumps around the state. As of the end of April, there are about 11 million left.

“What we do have left is a lot of smaller piles,” Butler said, most with less than 100,000 tires. There may be private, illegal piles in the state that DEP hasn’t identified, but enforcement efforts are taking aim at those, he said.

Maine has been so successful at reducing tire stockpiles, Butler said, that recently he was invited to speak at the International Tire Recyclers convention in Nashville, Tenn.

“We think we have a pretty good handle on tires in this state,” he said.

What Maine has done is create a market for chipped tires. Over the last five years tires at municipal landfills and illegal dumps have been shipped to processing centers in Eliot, and in Massachusetts, Butler said. The tires are slashed into 2-inch chips, which are sold to paper mills where they are used as supplemental fuel in boilers, and to businesses which use them in civil engineering applications.

A primary civil engineering use for the chips is in the beds of new or reconstructed roads. It’s been a tough sell, Butler admitted, convincing road building companies to use the chips instead of gravel. But he believes that chips actually work better in many instances, such as in wet areas, because the rubber chips will float rather than wash away.

DEP has convinced the state Department of Transportation and the Maine Turnpike Authority to give their approval of using chips in highway construction specifications.

Between 1.7 million and 2 million tires are discarded annually in Maine, Butler said. Tire dealers and auto repair businesses are now required to contract with a licensed tire disposal business to get rid of old tires. These businesses must be able to show a paper trail documenting the proper disposal of old tires.

But not everyone plays by the rules.

Butler said Harry Smith had three illegal tire dumps in the Meddybemps and Cooper areas of Washington County, including one site with 1.7 million tires. Smith has been prosecuted for importing old tires into the state, he said, and state officials believe Smith is at it again.

“We’ve thrown him in jail once, and we’re preparing to throw him in jail again,” Butler said. Smith faces a June 6 court date on new charges of accepting old tires illegally.

There is money to be made, Butler explained, by taking a load of old tires from a repair shop or tire center and dumping them somewhere on private property. Someone taking the tires away charges less than a licensed disposal business. Municipal officials have to be vigilant in spotting such dumps, he said.

While Butler calls the reduction of tire stockpiles a success, he does not dismiss McKenney’s concerns.

“He’s not too far off,” he said of the legislator comparing a bad tire fire with the Exxon Valdez spill. A single tire, weighing about 20 pounds, contains about two gallons of oil, he said.

Tire fires in large landfills in California and elsewhere have been known to last three years because they are so difficult to extinguish. Firefighters generally try to contain the blaze by smothering it with gravel.

“We’ve never really had a bad tire fire in the state,” Butler said, “and so the temptation is to loosen the regulations.” He opposes any weakening of the laws governing how tires are disposed.

He also notes that igniting a tire is not easy, so the chance of a grass fire touching off a tire fire is unlikely. But arson could be the cause of a tire fire, Butler said.

McKenney introduced LD 230, a bill that would eliminate the $1 fee added to the cost of a new tire at the point of purchase. The legislator argues that the fee was supposed to be used in tire pile cleanups, but has instead been used to fund state staff.

Butler counters that the $1 fee was never intended to cover disposal costs, though tire dealers continue to describe it as such. Bond money, approved by voters in the last several years, has paid for most of the tire pile cleanup, he said.

The $1 fee does fund DEP staff efforts, Butler said, such as in their effort to find markets for tire chips.