Baled Tires Repair Erosion
After reviewing several proposals, city officials chose to reinforce the banks with what they considered would be the most environmentally safe, cost effective method—a method involving deployment of baled used tires.
Once crews drained the 
river to allow for construction of the erosion control project, the first step was to dig a three- to four-foot-deep trench along the river's edge. This was lined with a concrete foundation, and set with steel reinforcing bars. Then, bales of tires were set atop the concrete for securing in place.
The key to putting the used-tire material to work was getting it compacted. For this, engineers turned to Encore Systems, Inc.'s tire baler.
The En-Core baler is a vertical down-stroke portable baler, which can compress up to 100 whole passenger and light-truck tires into a one-ton block measuring 30 X 50 X 60 in.—representing a volume reduction of five to one. In this compacted form, a flatbed truck carried up to 2400 tires a trip to the construction site.
With a line of bales in place, the next step involved encapsulating them in concrete—in effect using the bales as a foundation for a concrete-block wall. The bales also were prepared for a layer of facing stone that that would be laminated to their fronting surface. Last, back fill would be applied behind the wall.
The project will ultimately use approximately 700,000 recycled scrap tires. According to City Administrator Jon Tully, "It kills two birds with one stone. It stops the erosion, but it also gives us something to do with scrap tires."
JonTully can be reached at 505-887-1191.
Contact: En-Core Systems. Tel: 218-328-0023, 888-548-6710; E-mail:baler@northernet.com.
The previous case study was adapted from a presentation edited by Joyce Jungclaus for Public Works Online, a sister site to Solid Waste Online within the VerticalNet e-commerce family.