Inquirer: Reader getting tired of looking at tires in yard

A Concerned Reader named Bo sent an email this week concerning a growing trash dump in his Lakebottom neighborhood. But he sent it to Chuck Williams for some reason.

So Chuck, who occasionally fills in here when the helm of Inquirer Central is vacant, sent it on to me.

" wanted to send this lovely picture of the abandoned house with its latest addition of a tire heap (on) 15th Avenue. If you know anyone at the paper who helps remedy problems like this please pass it on."

So Chuck did.

Bo did send a picture of the mess, but I decided to ride by and take a look and maybe take my own picture. No offense, Bo, but I'm a pretty artistic guy.

The house is one I've written about before, but because it was vacant and the yard wasn't being tended to. It appears still to be vacant, but at least the yard is being tended within the requirements of the city's Special Enforcement Division.

The tires, however, are another matter. You're not allowed to store a stack of them in the yard.

What likely happened here is that someone wanted to get rid of the tires without riding out to the landfill and paying to dump them there. Or maybe they didn't know the city will pick up tires and take them to the landfill with the rest of the trash.

I'm not sure why some industrious refuse collector hasn't picked these up from the side of the road. They're obviously trash.

One reason they might not have been picked up is that the city limits each household to five tires in the landfill. So even though this is apparently a duplex, that would total up to 10 tires, and there are 15 in the yard.

So I called Ron Smith, deputy director of Public Works, who said this kind of situation has to be called in to the city, and to his knowledge no one had yet done that. But my call counted, so he said he would send a crew over to clean up the mess.

I asked if the tires would be recycled at the new Sustainability Center, but he said it's not set up to do tires. The good news, from a green perspective, is that the tires are not dumped in the landfill. They're hauled to a recycling center in Atlanta. The bad news is that the city has to pay to have them recycled.

So if you're the guy who dumped the tires in Bo's neighborhood, you owe the taxpayers some money.

-- Seen something that needs attention? Contact me at 706-571-8570 or mowen@ledger-enquirer.com.

This story was originally published December 21, 2014 at 9:48 PM with the headline "Inquirer: Reader getting tired of looking at tires in yard."