COASTAL OBSERVER

At the busiest time of year, Georgetown County loses $30,000 a month recycling tires. That’s the best case scenario. It may actually lose more.

County Council voted this week to raise the fee it charges to dispose of tires at the landfill, bringing it in line with a state law that took effect in May. But that will still make tire disposal a losing proposition.

“It’s kind of a question of what does the county want to do to try to stop the bleeding,” said Jay Watson, the county attorney.

The economics of tire recycling is simple. The county charges $100 a ton to dispose of tires. It pays a contractor, U.S. Tire, $500 a ton to haul them from the landfill for recycling.

Last year, the county landfill took in 781 tons of tires, according to the state Department of Environmental Services. That means it spent $390,500 to have them recycled.

But the county took in less than a 10th of that amount in fees, just under $37,000. That’s because the county doesn’t charge a fee if the person disposing of the tires can show that they paid a $2 per tire state fee.

Based on industry standards, it takes about 100 passenger tires to make a ton.

The state law changed this year to allow counties to collect a fee of $150 a ton if the tire fee was paid and $400 a ton if it wasn’t.

That still falls short of the $500 a ton the county pays to U.S. Tire, and it doesn’t account for other costs, said James Dorsey, the county Environmental Services manager.

“We have to actually load their trucks. So we pay our manpower, our fuel,” Dorsey said.

To help keep costs down, the landfill won’t accept tires from people outside Georgetown County, he said. At its peak, the landfill takes in 300 tons a month.   

That led Council Chairman Clint Elliott and Vice Chairman Stella Mercado to do some quick math.

“We’re losing 30 grand a month. We need to look at that,” Elliott said.

The county ought to at least break even, he said.

“We don’t want to lose money anywhere because we can’t afford to,” Council Member Bob Anderson said. “I’d rather see us make a profit than break even. We’re in a business here.”

The county’s options are limited, Watson said.

The $150/$400 fee structure is set by state law. “The county can work within that, or maybe lessen that. I don’t think the county can go above it,” he said.

Anderson suggested the county consider a class-action suit against the state.

“Can’t bring a class-action suit against a governmental entity in South Carolina,” Watson said.

He did tell the council that he spoke to another county attorney who said that their county was charging $400 a ton regardless of whether the state tire fee had been paid.

Watson was unsure if that would hold up to scrutiny. The state law specifies that counties can charge a $150 tipping fee if a person can document that the state tire fee has been paid.

Elliott asked about looking for other contractors to haul off the tires at a better price.

“Not a whole lot of people out there are doing it,” Dorsey said.

One way to cut costs would be for the county to recycle the tires itself and use them as cover for the landfill. There is enough space at the landfill to take in waste for another 80 years, but the county will need to buy more land in order to get dirt to cover that waste, according to the former director of Public Services, Ray Funnye.

The waste tires are chipped by recycling firms and burned for fuel or used in drainage projects, Dorsey said. South Carolina hasn’t approved them for landfill cover, but he thinks it’s coming.

“That should cut down on our expenses for us getting rid of them,” Dorsey said.

Council Member Raymond Newton said there is another cost that the county needs to consider.

“When someone goes out in a rural road and dumps 25 tires because they don’t want to pay the tipping fee at the landfill, who goes and picks those tires up?” he asked.

“When that does happen, yeah, we in Environmental Services, we have to go out and actually pick them up,” Dorsey said. “We definitely have thought about that.”

Elliott suggested the county look at its litter ordinance and make sure the penalty for tires is a sufficient deterrent.

“Kind of put that out there and say: if you dump tires it’s going to cost you,” he said.

That’s something the council can take up separately from the tire fee, Watson said. “We’ve done that in some other situations in the last couple of years where we realized that we just didn’t have enough teeth in the ordinance and people were ignoring it.”

Newton also suggested the county find out what the state does with its $2 tire recycling fee.

That fee, which was adopted in 1991, is collected like the state sales tax. The law specifies that $1.50 of the fee goes to a fund that is disbursed among the 46 counties based on population. The other 50 cents goes to the Waste Tire Grant Trust Fund.

The state currently collects about $8 million a year in fees, according to the Office of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs.  That is expected to rise to $12 million because the new state law applied the fee to used tires.

The review by Fiscal Affairs also found most if not all counties lost money on waste tires. “Several counties expressed that the bill will help offset the deficit,” the office reported.

One of the purposes of the Waste Tire Grant Fund is to help counties that use up their share of the state fee to handle the cost of disposal. 

But the new law also expanded the uses of those grants to make businesses eligible for funding for projects that find ways to use waste tires. The next grant cycle doesn’t open until February.

The council approved second reading of the new tire fees 6-1. Newton was opposed, citing concerns about illegal dumping.

The fees are due for final approval later this month. Dorsey said he would provide the council with a breakdown of the total cost of handling waste tires. Watson said he would check on the options for a higher fee.

“We might can even go to a straight $400 if you want,” he said. He was doubtful about a $500 fee.

“Can we send the bill to the state?” Elliott asked.