Rubber meeting the road: Bernalillo County cleanup team clears illegally dumped tires

It was dirt and stacked tires as far as the eye could see on a recent morning in the South Valley, where members of Bernalillo County’s Clean Team were hard at work collecting and cutting illegally dumped tires.

The area where they were working, the Pajarito Mesa, is on private property, and the owner had been cited twice for the dumpsite, according to Gabriel Villescas, the county’s solid waste manager.

“We see if we can get them to comply and clean up the illegal dumping. They haven’t complied, so our ordinance gives us the ability to come in and remediate the site,” Villescas said.

The Bernalillo County solid waste ordinance gives Villescas and his crew the jurisdiction to clean up illegal dump sites in the county’s unincorporated areas. It states that, “If the (owner) fails to remedy the violation within the specified time, then the county will require corrective action be started at the site immediately, at the expense of the owner, and charge a lien on the property.”

In the case of this particular project, Villescas said a bill from the county will be sent to the owner for the labor and the owner will need to pay within 30 days or a lien will be placed on the property.

Roughly 500 tires were collected from the property over the course of the preceding week and a half and piled up in anticipation of Friday. In prior jobs, the cleanup team would haul truckloads of whole tires to either the city of Albuquerque’s Cerro Colorado landfill or the Estancia Valley regional landfill — at the cost of roughly $2,000 a load.

That all changed four months ago with the purchase of a tire cutter — the TC-100 E tire cutter to be exact, which is capable of cutting tires as big as a semi’s. Team members on Friday were cutting tires into four pieces and tossing them into the flatbed of a nearby work truck.

The tire cutter not only saves time and space, but also money . Hauling a load of tires now costs the county hundreds of dollars as opposed to thousands, according to Villescas. The cutting of the tires also makes the pieces eligible to be classified as municipal solid waste, which means it can be taken to a landfill.

In addition to the cutter, the cleanup team added more funding to its program, which has translated into more workers, more equipment and now more cleanup patrols around the county. This comes after Villescas said he spent the past year rewriting workers’ job descriptions and responsibilities to give the cleanup team more flexibility to deal with illegal dumping.

“We’re increasing the frequency of our patrolling. That way we can go ahead and clean up these sites and address these issues,” Villescas said. “Because, ultimately, it’s harmful to the environment and us as well.”

The Albuquerque Journal reported in August that on average, three tires were being dumped each day on public rights of way in Bernalillo County.

The increase in staffing already has allowed the county in recent months to perform about 40 cleanups similar to Friday’s, and Villescas said the county is in the process of developing a calendar for cleanup patrols.

“These guys are working for them and for our environment, and (the public) is going to see a lot more of us out there now,” he said.

Pictures: Bernalillo County cleanup team clears illegally dumped tires