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South Carolina governor orders DHEC to clean up Moncks Corner tire mess

Post & Courier - 5/2/2018

Gov. Henry McMaster on Tuesday asked state health officials to clean up a closed recycling facility in Moncks Corner where hundreds of thousands of tires have been abandoned near a residential neighborhood.

“These abandoned tires pose a serious environmental and public health risk to the residents of Berkeley County,” McMaster said in a letter to Mark Elam, chairman of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

McMaster wants DHEC to give Berkeley County money from the agency’s Solid Waste Tire Fund to pay for cleanup of the Viva Recycling site at 111 Old Depot Road. The fund gets money from a $2 fee consumers pay for every new tire purchased in South Carolina.

McMaster’s letter follows a Post and Courier report “Tire Failure” that showed how lax rules and oversight left mountains of mosquito-infested tires at Viva’s plants in Moncks Corner and Anderson.

In his letter, McMaster said, “The sheer magnitude of environmental damage and hazard to air quality created by these giant tire piles catching fire might very well devastate the pristine ecosystem of the South Carolina low country for generations to come.”

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A DHEC spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday. The agency has previously said it wants to try to get Viva to pay for the cleanup. DHEC obtained a nearly $1.7 million judgment this year against Viva and its manager, Marty Sergi, for unpaid fines related to the recycling facility, which was shut down by regulators last June.

The Post and Courier report showed how in 2013, DHEC granted the company a permit to store up to 99,000 tires at its site off Cypress Gardens Road. The next year, the agency notified the company that it violated its permit, yet Viva continued to accept used tires, records obtained by the newspaper show.

“The cheapest way to make the most money is to bring tires in and don’t do anything with them,” Nick Bruno, a former Viva official said in the newspaper’s report. “From being in the industry, I know that if you’re allowed to have 50,000 tires, you’ll have 50,000 tires on site. If you’re allowed to have 200,000, you have 200,000.”

By the end of 2015, DHEC estimated that the Moncks Corner site had at least 222,000 tires.

A similar situation happened at Viva’s plant in Anderson. The company’s DHEC permit allowed only 4,000 tires. DHEC later estimated that within four months, the number of tires on the Upstate lot increased to 200,000.

Berkeley County officials say they contacted McMaster’s office seeking help to clean up the site.

“Berkeley County leaders are urging DHEC officials to utilize its authority to protect the health and safety of the citizens by cleaning the site and removing all the tires,” county spokeswoman Hannah Moldenhauer said in a statement Tuesday. She said county officials are “exploring all options to ensure this situation is addressed.”

Rob Czukor, a tire-recycling consultant who has offered to help state officials clean up the Viva Recycling property, told The Post and Courier the site “is the largest public health threat in the area and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.”

DHEC officials haven’t said how much they think it will cost to remove and dispose of the tires at Viva Recycling and clean up the site. In a similar situation in Florida, however, that state’s environmental agency put the cost at between $3 and $4 per tire.