Cutting down the pile

Mason Dingwall operates a tire cutter at the community's solid waste transfer station, working his way through the immense stack of tires that the borough hopes to dig into, chop up and ship out of town. Cutting up the tires makes it easier to fit the pieces into containers for the barge ride out of state.

Wrangell is the first of the Southeast Alaska Solid Waste Authority members to get the $56,700 hydraulic shear, which was purchased by the Southeast Conference with a grant and is being shared by several communities, all wanting to cut up old tires for shipment out of town. The machine is scheduled to leave Wrangell for Petersburg in February.

Public Works Director Tom Wetor, who last month hired a part-time employee to help cut through the stack, said Monday workers had chopped their way through maybe one-quarter to one-third of the pile of an estimated 20,000 tires that had accumulated over decades.

They have just about filled a 40-foot-long container and are eager to further reduce the pile before the machine leaves town.

 

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