Huntsville water, tire issues on tap

The Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission will meet Friday to hear final proposals on regulations overhauling scrap tire management and raising water quality limits near Huntsville in Madison County.

The new scrap tire regulation would replace previous rules and implement Act 317 of 2017, a 36-page act sponsored by Rep. Lanny Fite, R-Benton. The law sought to make tire districts and tire dealers more accountable and transparent in their operations to the state by requiring business plans and electronic manifest systems that track tires.

The law required the changes to be effective Jan. 1 of this year, but department officials have used only temporary rules to implement the changes since then. The regulation before the commission Friday would be permanent and largely mirror the temporary regulations.

Two state solid-waste district leaders said they could not cost-effectively staff their tire collection sites as often as the department wanted them to, but their requests were not incorporated into the final regulation.

Commissioners put off Huntsville’s petition in October after some commissioners raised concerns that the data used to support Huntsville’s proposal was too old.

More recent water quality data on War Eagle Creek, one of the locations for which the petition proposes water-quality changes, show mineral levels in one spot far below what the city proposes raising them to, Commissioner Doug Melton said.

The proposal by the city of Huntsville has been in the works since 2013. The city’s wastewater discharge permit expired in early 2014, but it has remained active through an administrative hold placed on it by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.