Borough working on solution to move 'Mount Tires' out of town

There’s a new solution in the works to deal with the large pile of tires at the solid waste transfer station, often referred to as “Mount Tires.”

This new solution would include moving the tires to the former 6-Mile sawmill property and then shipping them out of town as part of a deal with the tenant at the borough-owned waterfront site.

The borough manager is negotiating on a longer-term lease or rental agreement at the former mill site with Channel Construction. If they can reach a deal, ideally Channel Construction would remove the tires from the waste station on the north end of the island and ship them south, a job that would otherwise cost the borough well over $100,000, Tom Wetor, public works director, said March 4.

The borough purchased the mill property in 2022 for $2.5 million, and currently only has one tenant — Channel Construction — on the almost 40 acres.

The Juneau-based scrap hauling and construction company has been operating a scrap metal recycling and barging operation under short-term leases at the mill site for the past few years.

Moving the tires would make room for installation of a new loading dock at the solid waste transfer station, a project that has been in the works for almost two years. A loading ramp and platform would make it easier to position a forklift to dump large, compressed bales of trash into open-top containers for barging to an approved landfill out of state.

The goal is to begin putting in the loading platform this summer, and the tires must be cleared out to make room.

However, plans to move the mound of rubber to 6-Mile include only tires from passenger vehicles. There is currently no plan to dispose of larger tires from big trucks, which are much more difficult to move.

The borough has tried other methods in the past to get rid of the tires, but there hasn’t been a great solution. Twice in the past three years, Wrangell has borrowed a tire-cutting machine in an effort to chop up and pack more tires into containers to be shipped out by barge. However, the machine only made a dent in the mountain of tires and was never able to get ahead of the growing stack.

Tires in general are extremely difficult to get rid of. If they are tossed in with general trash for a landfill, they can damage landfill liners. They also contribute to microplastics in the environment.

Wetor noted one problem in Wrangell is that nothing was done with the tires for 30 years, allowing the pile to grow several feet taller than a person. He is hopeful that clearing out Mount Tires will allow the community to keep pace with disposal in the future.