Last Quebec tire dump gone, 22 years after huge fire

The last of what were once hundreds of used-tire dumps across the province of Quebec is finally empty, thanks to a provincial tire-recycling program that environmentalist groups hailed Friday as a resounding success.

Many Quebecers remember the notorious tire fire in the south shore community of St. Amable in the spring of 1990, when 3.5 million scrap tires burned over a period of six days. The toxic smoke plumes could be seen from Montreal, 40 kilometres away, and the cleanup cost $12 million.

That fire, and another in February of the same year in Hagersville, Ont. that burned for 17 days, alerted authorities and environmental groups to the dangers of stockpiling used tires.

On Friday, Environment Minister Pierre Arcand went to a tire warehousing site in Franklin, which at one time contained more than 22 million used tires, to declare Quebec’s tire stockpiling days finally and officially over.

Arcand congratulated Recyc-Québec, the province’s recycling authority, and its partners on completing the “colossal” task of clearing out and recycling nearly 50 million tires from more than 800 sites since 2001.

In 1996, Recyc-Québec began organizing the collection and recycling of the more than 8 million tires that Quebec motorists were shedding each year. But that still left the problem of mountains of old tires stockpiled in rural areas for decades.

In 2000, an inventory of tire dumps across the province revealed that more than 50 million used tires were sitting in 835 small dumps, and 12 large warehousing centres across the province. Each of these dumps, environmental groups warned, was an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

Because tires are made of natural and synthetic rubber, a derivative of oil, tire fires are difficult to control.

Burning tires release dioxins, furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other dangerous pollutants into the air.

These toxins can also contaminate soil and groundwater, and they accumulate in living organisms, so the damage is long-term.

Since 1999, motorists have had to pay a $3 environment- al tax on new tires, to fund a collection and recycling program.

In 2000, the Quebec government finally outlawed stockpiling, burying or burning used tires and made it illegal to bring used tires into its territory.

In 2001, recyc-québec began to tackle the tires that had been deteriorating in dumps for decades.

Now, depending on their condition, used tires in Quebe care refurbished (recovered with a layer of rubber that, when heated, adheres to the used-tire surface) and reused, recycled or burned to fuel ce- ment kilns in place of coal.

Tires not suitable for refurbishing are shredded, the metal belts are removed and the rubber is turned into pellets, which can be made into products such as rugs, floor tiles, flower pots and artificial turf.

Quebec’s tire-recycling programs have collected 151 million used tires, employed 500 people and generated revenues of $40 million, government officials said.

“This is very good news,” said André Bélisle, president of the Association Québécoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique.