Looper bill would eliminate piles of tires

DENVER - A bill designed to eliminate the state’s massive piles of used tire, including more than 30 million tires stored on 58 acres near Fountain, cruised through a committee hearing Tuesday.

The House Transportation and Energy Committee unanimously backed the plan penned by Calhan Republican Rep. Marsha Looper, which would more closely regulate tire haulers and give more money to firms that put the tires to use.

Looper said she became involved with the issue because her district includes the mountains of used tires that have been accumulating for decades at the Midway site, south of Fountain, operated by Colorado Energy Recyclers. The firm hopes to shred the tires and burn them as fuel at a cement plant south of Pueblo, said Paul Selby, who represented the firm at Tuesday’s hearing.

He said Looper’s bill, by encouraging recycling programs, “creates a structure for us to use the tires.”

The 33-page bill, HB1018, would consolidate the state’s tire-recycling programs under the Department of Public Health and Environment. It also establishes a monitoring program to track the transport of used tires.

The fees people pay when they buy new tires would be funneled to a program to clean up illegal tire dumps, to start a tire-fire prevention program and to pay firms that recycle waste tires. It would pay recyclers up $65 per ton for disposing of tires.

Looper said preventing fires was her top priority.

State officials estimate that Colorado has the third-largest store of used tires in America.

El Paso County Commissioner Jim Bensberg, who attended the hearing, said waste tires have been a headache for years in the region. The county approved a resolution last year to support the Midway tire clean-up.

Looper’s bill, co-sponsored by Democratic Rep. Dianne Primavera of Broomfield, would go a long way to reducing the piles, he said.

The measure now heads to the Appropriations Committee, which must sign off on it before the bill gets a floor vote in the House.