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Saturday, November 28, 1998 ■ tate. T r pile too b1mg r r= Responsibleyard stfi faces $ 10,000 fine By Rob Nelson Record Staff Writer WESTLEY — An estimated 200,000 tires appear to have been stockpiled illegally over the past few months at a disposal yard near Westley, state officials , say. Technically two separate tire disposal facilities a �r• stone's throw from one another, the Westley yard has several thousand tons more tires than state permits _ allow, said Eric Lamoureux, a spokesman for the _ California Integrated Waste Management Board. The tires accumulated over the past two months and have overflowed from one facility into the next, making ownership difficult to determine, Lamoureux said. "The size of the pile definitely appears to have grown," Lamoureux said. "It's unclear at this point which facility allowed them to be stockpiled." Officials for Oxford Tire Recycling denied responsi- bility for the added tires, and the management of Modesto Energy Limited Partership could not be reached for comment Friday. The Waste Management Board plans to take disci- plinary action against whichever facility is found to have taken in the additional tires, officials said. Tire yards that violate their state operating permits can be fined up to $10,000. The board plans to continue its investigation of the Westley site after the weekend, Lamoureux said. State officials, acting on complaints, discovered the over- flow tires during an inspection of the Westley site last week. The Westley tire yard is often thought of as a sin- gle sprawling entity, a dumping and disposal facility that encompasses more than 6 million tires. But while the site remains the largest accumulation of waste tires in California, it is in fact two separate piles, officials said. One belongs to Oxford Tire Recycling, a private company owned by Mark Kirkland that had its oper- ating permit revoked in August. After 1994, tire dis- posal facilities were not allowed to operate in the state without permits from the Integrated Waste Management Board.The board voted unanimously to strip Kirkland of his permit this past summer, accus- ing the owner of failing to live up to a 1997 promise that Oxford would have its accumulated tires removed by the turn of the century. Kirkland maintains that he was making a good- -aith effort to get rid of Oxford's tires, which at one ime numbered near 10 million, and that a previous agreement with government and environmental authorities gave him until 2015. The waste board, iowever, concluded he wasn't moving fast enough. Oxford has been unable to take waste tires in since the permit revocation, Lamoureux said. But the com- aany has not added tires to the pile in more than -wo years, instead making money by taking the waste tires directly to incinerators and other disposal facil- ities, Kirkland insists. Company officials said Wednesday that Oxford is aot responsible for the 200,000 additional tires at ,Vestley. Oxford's neighbor at the tire site, Modesto Energy, s a power company owned by UAE Energy „perations Corp. of San Ramon. Modesto Energy iaintains an incinerator at Westley, the area's pre- --der facility for getting rid of waste tires, officials Please see TIRE,Back page