Early last year we embarked on an effort to address one of this county's most cumbersome problems. The existence of old tire dumps, throughout the Northeastern United States, has proven to be a difficult issue for many communities to resolve. It has become rather clear that only by working together, in partnership and pooling our efforts, can problems such as these be addressed.
Old tire dumps present many hazards to the public in addition to their unsightliness.
One of the biggest potential hazards is the environmental damage they can cause if they catch fire. The Levant tire dump posed a particularly hazardous threat to the environment due to the fact that it sits on top of an aquifer that provides drinking water for many Chautauqua County residents and businesses. When I took office last year, we began to pursue the clean up of our tire dumps, starting with the most hazardous one in Levant. We had to find a use for the old tires at that dump as well as find a method of transforming them for an end use purpose. The tire baling method was chosen from among several creative solutions the staff generated for review.