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At the Corralitos Regional Landfill, a big “Shark” is laying waste to a very tiring stacked eyesore: thousands of used tires. The South Central Solid Waste Authority (SCSWA) has rented a TANA Shark shredder, which is ripping its way through the old trashed tires set aside at the landfill.
“Scrap tires are problematic. Stacked against a building or scattered across the desert, they become a breeding ground for mosquitos with the least amount of rain,” said Miguel Fernandez, SCSWA program administrator. “When landfilled, the whole tires tend to rise back to the surface of the solid waste, so we shred them. The shreds then have a beneficial use in trash management.”
Fernandez said the SCSWA recently collected hundreds of tires due to community cleanups, especially from a recent Chaparral beautification effort. Plenty of illegally dumped tires are still found in our surrounding desert, but group cleanups help remove the hazard from the desert.
While SCSWA has a mobile shredder, it cannot handle the large number of scrap tires that have come in. The TANA Shark spits out different sizes of material, from fine rubber crumbs to 3-inch and 6-inch tire shreds, about the size of a fist, all the way up to pieces that are one foot square.
“We’re thinking we may rent the shredder quarterly,” Fernandez said. “We can use the shredded material as alternative daily cover at the landfill. Alternative daily cover means we can use this material instead of 6-inches of soil at the end of each day to cover the compacted waste to control insects, odors and blowing litter.”
The Corralitos Regional Landfill, located along I-10 about 15 miles west of Las Cruces, is in the process of building a new 14-acre cell to contain waste on its 600 acres. This will be the fourth cell at Corralitos – a highly engineered, lined, permitted, award-winning facility that is the repository for the solid waste generated by the regional population.
The South Central Solid Waste Authority (SCSWA) can be reached at 575-528-3800 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday or visit www.SCSWA.net.
