processed from California waste tires. Local governments can request grants from $6,250 to $50,000 per project with a limit of $150,000 in grants per jurisdiction. Ten percent (10%) of the funds are set aside for eligible rural jurisdictions. Six counties and 26 cities turned in 89 applications by the March 5 deadline. According to Nate Gauff, CIWMB coordinator for the grant program, 70 applications were deemed eligible for funding and the total $1.1 million plus an additional $89, 480 was awarded at the April 13-14, 2004 CIWMB Board Meeting.

California Becomes a Model for Tire Recycling

Editors note: The following is from the California Tire Report, December 30, 2003. Edited and Published by: Terry Leveille, President of TL & Associates tel: 916-536-0451 · fax: 916-536-0453 e-mail: terry@caltirereport.com
     In the past few years, California has moved away from its role as a laggard among states dealing with illegal tire pile problems and spotty markets for recycled tire feedstock and products. Aside from the state directly cleaning up millions of tires and encouraging property owners to remediate their own backyard stockpiles under the threat of legal action, two huge tire fires-one in 1998 and the other in 1999-were responsible for eradicating twelve million or more tires.      The conflagrations, however, also lit a fire under the California State Legislature, leading to the passage of a major tire bill that increased the fee on the sale of every new tire from 25-cents to one dollar, including tires on new and used vehicles sold in the state. The bill also required that the CIWMB develop and implement a series of new programs with an annual budget of about $32 million.
     Invigorated with the new cash windfall, the CIWMB embarked on an ambitious and diversified effort to keep an increasing number of tires out of landfills. The state had something to prove, since as recently as 1997 California recycled barely half of the 33 million scrap tires it generated (see Table 1). That same year, most of the tires that were diverted- approximately nine million-were used as fuel for an energy company and in four cement plants.