Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Company Could Use Tires

Virtually every used tire in Arkansas could be consumed by the appetite of the Ash Grove Cement Plant.

The Upper Southwest Regional Solid Waste Management District was given this information during its regular meeting, Friday, Aug. 8, at the Howard County Landfill.

Ash Grove is located at Foreman, in Little River County. It has a tire shredding and feeding equipment on site and could be ready to use the tires as supplemental fuel by Sept. 1.

However, getting the tires from point A to point B (Ash Grove) won't be an easy task. First, Arkansas' 17 solid waste management districts will be given the option of joining the Arkansas Waste Tire Alliance which will administer the program.

Joe Ball, manager of the Upper Southwest District, said 13 of the districts are expected to join the alliance. These districts, he said, handle 72 percent of the tires sold in Arkansas.

The board of directors for the Upper Southwest, composed of mayors and county judges in a nine county area of Southwest Arkansas, voted unanimously to pass a resolution to join the alliance.

Ball will be the district's designated representative. The resolution also allows the alliance to operate the tire disposal program and authorizes it to execute contracts.

Howard County Judge Max Tackett said because the Upper Southwest facility will be the staging area for the tires, trucks delivering waste tires should not use county roads.

This stipulation will be in the contract with the alliance, Ball said, making sure the trucks hauling the tires stay off county roads and only utilize state highways in Howard County.

The Ash Grove plant will burn more than 10,000 tires each day, and wants deliveries to be made on a "just in time" basis 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The tires burned by the plant are completely destroyed, becoming part of the ingredients of the cement.

Ball said this is the best way to get rid of tires. The alliance will also pay the Ash Grove plant 25 cents per tire.

The board, in other business, discussed the decision made by the Southwest Central Regional Solid Waste Management District not to merge with the Upper Southwest.

The Southwest Central district, made up of Garland, Clark and Hot Spring counties, decided, instead to look into building its own landfill. At one time, this district showed interest in merging with the Upper Southwest in a partnership because of a pellet fuel process wanted by Georgia Pacific.

The Southwest Central district currently is under contract with Saline County, but this contract expires in September 1998. Ball said it will take the district about three years to get a working landfill operational.

The Upper Southwest needed the volume of garbage produced by the Southwest Central district to start its fuel pellet operation. The original idea was to sell the pellets to GP's Ashdown mill.

However, Ball informed the board other counties have shown interest in joining the Upper Southwest for this venture.