Lancaster Gets Grant to Recycle Used Tires : Waste: The state will fund three trial programs. Old treads will be melted, shredded or used for compost bins.

Lancaster may become the scrap tire capital of California.

The city has been awarded a grant of $196,120 by the California Integrated Waste Management Board to pay for three pilot programs to recycle used tires and reduce the 28 million tires annually dumped in landfills statewide.

Although Antelope Valley residents throw out 500 to 800 scrap tires per day, Lancaster recycling coordinator Ray Olson said the pilot programs should use up even more.

“We’re actually looking at some industries that may relocate into Lancaster that may need more tires than we produce,” Olson said.

One $50,000 program would shred tires “into about the size of pencil erasers” and blend them with compost for use as turf material in two Lancaster city park soccer fields. Olson said the fields will use 81 tons of tires each and the modified soil is expected to reduce both player injuries and the need for watering and fertilizing of the soil by 30%.

It will be the only use of the process in California, said spokesman Tom Elsen of the state waste management board, as is Lancaster’s proposed manufacturing of 1,800 back-yard compost bins out of used tires. That process is expected to cost $20,000 to purchase the machine to punch out necessary parts from the tires. The city will spend $76,120 to pay local nonprofit groups to assemble them. About four tires are needed to produce each compost bin.

The third program, also to cost $50,000, melts tires for use as asphalt sealant. Areas with varying levels of traffic use are to be coated with the material. So far only the parking lot at Lancaster City Hall has been identified as an area to be tested with the melted-tire sealant.

Once considered an experimental paving material, the recycled tire sealant has become more commonplace, with the California Department of Transportation now required to use a minimum amount of the material in state roads.

The city of Santa Clarita has used a mix of asphalt with conventional concrete and rubber particles, including recycled tires, on several of its roads since 1989, including a five-mile stretch of Soledad Canyon Road, the city’s primary east-west thoroughfare.

“For some reason that rubber gives the road enough flexibility to stay together,” said Kit Nell, Santa Clarita traffic engineer, indicating that the road surfaces have held up as well as those of conventional paving.

Lancaster will monitor the three research projects for one year. Olson said the city would like to start the programs in late June or early July.

The state grant covers the entire cost of the programs and requires no matching funds from the city.

Supporters say the scrap tire programs could bring permanent jobs and financial investments to the area if they are successful, and City Manager Jim Gilley said he hoped that Lancaster could “become a center point for that entire industry.”

However, some officials are having visions of huge tire mounds emerging in the city. “Are we going to become a scrap yard for tires?” Councilman George Root asked Monday night, when the council approved acceptance of the grant.

Olson said tire stores now pay to haul scrap tires away and Lancaster will probably take over that service, although he is unsure if the city will do so for free or charge a fee to cover hauling.

Creating a market for recycled tires will help municipalities meet the California mandate to cut trash in half by the turn of the century.

Assembly Bill 939, passed in 1989, requires cities and counties statewide to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills by 25% as of 1995 and by 50% by the year 2000. Municipalities that fail to do so face fines of up to $10,000 per day.