Skip to content

Tag Archives: Illegal Dumping

Don’t Kick the Bucket!

On March 5, the department’s 24-hour Environmental Emergency Response Hotline received a call from the Missouri Department of Transportation regarding an abandoned five-gallon bucket on East bound I-70 in the St. Louis area.

The label on the bucket indicated that the contents were a corrosive industrial cleaner. The bucket appeared to be about 1/3 full. Emergency staff responded and over packed the container, placing it into the abandoned container storage facility at the office. Staff will characterize the liquid and neutralize if necessary.

If you see a leaking or abandoned container, or witness an environmental emergency, please call the Missouri Department of Natural Resources at 573-634-2436. Do not touch the material or abandoned containers. An environmental emergency poses an immediate threat to the public health or the well-being of the environment.

Emergency response is the department’s front line of defense against significant and imminent hazardous substance releases that impact public safety and the environment. Duty officers monitor the statutorily mandated Spill Reporting Hotline 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. 

Staff provide technical assistance regarding the chemical and necessary cleanup actions, work with the responsible party to ensure that proper cleanup is completed and impact to the public health and environment is minimized, conduct notifications to various agencies, and determine if an on-site response is needed by emergency staff.

On average, the Environmental Emergency Response section receives more than 1,500 incident calls and responds to nearly 450 hazardous substance emergencies each year.

An environmental concern is a situation that you believe threatens the environment, such as a trash dump or discarded waste tires in a stream.

 

Posted on Mar 14, 2012

Green Tips – Used Tires

Every year millions of tires find reuse in playground materials and are burned as fuel yet every year there are still thousands of tires that end up in illegal dumps.

Scrap tires are a breeding ground for mosquitoes, snakes, rats and other vermin.  

If you change your own tires, these tips may come in handy. 

Leave used tires with the dealer when buying replacement tires. Dealers are required to accept them on a one-to-one basis for a small fee.

 

Tires may be hauled to a tire processor, scrap tire site or tire hauler. Tires can only be taken to a landfill if they are cut, chipped or shredded. Rather than dumping or placing in a landfill, tires can be recycled.

There are places to legally take scrap tires in Missouri. They usually charge a fee per tire and can accept whole tires. Call 1-800-361-4827 or check Scrap Tire Processors in Missouri for a list of processors. 

If we reduce the amount of waste materials by only buying what we need or finding a way to recycle them, we’re conserving resources and saving energy.  

Each year, one scrap tire per person is generated in Missouri or approximately 6 million tires. More than 16 million tires have been cleaned up in Missouri since the department began the scrap tire cleanup program.  Please help us protect our natural resources by recycling tires in Missouri. 

For more information about disposing of used tires, contact us at 800-361-4827 or 573-751-5401.  Visit the Solid Waste Management Program, Scrap Tires and Illegal Dumping or Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  

 

Posted on Mar 14, 2012

Covert Cameras Catch Illegal Dumpers in KC

They thought they were getting away with it, but illegal dumpers in the Kansas City area have been finding out lately that their trips to some dump sites around the city over the past two years have been secretly taped by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

Twelve individuals have seen their day in court and have paid fines ranging from $500 to $1,000 per dumping incident as a result of being identified in some of the more than 50 cases that were caught on concealed cameras placed by the department at known dump sites in the city. In addition to those 12, several bench warrants have been issued for failure to appear and several suspects have court dates pending. The department continues to work with local authorities to bring charges against several suspects who have yet to be identified or cannot be located.

One individual was fined $500 for dumping five scrap tires that would have cost him about $15 if he would have disposed of them properly. Another person was fined $750 after dumping a refrigerator on the side of the road – two blocks away from a recycling facility. Department staff continue to work with local agencies to identify and locate those caught on camera.

Concerned organizations and agencies such as the Kansas City Neighborhood and Community Services Department, Kansas City Police Department, city and county prosecutors and several others have worked cooperatively with the department.

The project is reaching its fifteenth anniversary and has helped many counties prosecute those who decided to leave their waste on the side of the road instead of taking it to a permitted facility. Project staff cover the entire state providing assistance to local agencies. Multiple types of equipment are used, ranging from cameras that can read a license plate at more than 150 yards to some cameras that are as small as a golfing tee.

Several of the dumping videos are available online at http://www.dnr.mo.gov/env/swmp/dumping-videos.htm. Higher quality illegal dumping video clips are available to broadcast media outlets.  To download the video clips, contact Victoria Lovejoy at 573-526-1837.

For more information regarding illegal dumping or to report illegal dumping using the department’s online form, please visit  http://dnr.mo.gov/env/swmp/dumping/enf_instruct.htm or contact the department’s Solid Waste Management Program at 800-361-4827 or at 573-751-5401.

 

Posted on Dec 14, 2011

After a Disaster –Household Chemicals and Household Hazardous Wastes

After a Disaster –Household Chemicals and Household Hazardous Wastes:

Disasters may leave behind damaged or unusable household chemicals. Products labeled POISON, DANGER, WARNING, or CAUTION contain hazardous chemicals. These household hazardous wastes should be separated from other wastes before disposal. Extreme caution should be used when cleaning up damaged containers. Wear rubber gloves, avoid breathing fumes or dust and only work in a well-ventilated area. Never burn these wastes. Counties and municipalities are encouraged to provide collection programs. If one is not available, household hazardous waste may be disposed of at a permitted sanitary landfill.

In order to make the transition back to normal life easier, both individuals and governments need to have plans in place for dealing with the solid waste that accumulates during and after a disaster.  Check with your county and city officials for locations where debris is being collected.

Items like plant waste, building debris, dead animals, household hazardous wastes and tires have other options available to them besides being dumped into a landfill.

If you would like more information on open burning or other post-disaster solid waste management, please visit the Solid Waste Management Program web site.

Permitted Facilities;

Construction and Demolition Waste;

e-cycle Missouri;

Household Hazardous Waste;

Schedule of Local Household Hazardous Waste Collection Events;

Reduce. Reuse, Recycle;

Scrap Tires and Illegal Dumping

If you would like to receive information regarding hazardous waste management, please visit the Hazardous Waste Program web site.  

Posted on Sep 02, 2011

Tire Dump Round-Up program

If you have more than 500 and less than 10,000 illegal scrap tires on your property, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources can help.  Through its Tire Dump Round-Up program, the department is offering qualified property owners the opportunity to have scrap tires cleaned up free of charge. The program is funded by the state’s 50-cent-per-tire scrap fee paid when new tires are purchased in Missouri. Other financial incentive programs are available to those who do not qualify for this program.

 

Program criteria for private property owners:

• Scrap tire dump must contain 500 – 10,000 tires.

• The owner is required to sign an access agreement stating that if a property owner violates the solid waste management law in the future the department can proceed with assessing penalties and incident cost recovery.

• Active businesses and property owners who have participated in prior cleanup initiatives are not eligible.

 

The department will continue to work with Solid Waste Districts and not-for-profit citizens groups in cleaning up dumps with less than 500 tires.

 

Scrap tire dumps pose serious threats to human health and the environment. Insects and rodents that grow and breed in these dumps can transmit diseases, such as West Nile Virus. Tire dump fires can release hazardous substances into the air, land and water.

 

Recycled scrap tires can provide several beneficial uses, including rubberized asphalt, playgrounds, running tracks and walking trails.

 

For more information or to sign up, contact the Solid Waste Management Program’s Scrap Tire Unit at 800-361-4827 or 573-751-5401 or visit us at Tire Dump Round-Up.

 

 For more information regarding scrap tires, please visit: Scrap Tires and Illegal Dumping  

 

For more information regarding solid waste management, please visit: Solid Waste Management Program  

Posted on Jul 26, 2011