Michigan DEQ Awards Grants For Scrap Tire Reuse

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is awarding $2.5 million dollars in grant money to University and local government recipients for road projects that reuse scrap tires.

The largest grants — $1.2-million dollars to Michigan Technological University (MTU) and $500,000 to Michigan State University (MSU) are for research projects that will study specific uses and characteristics of rubber modified asphalt.

MTU will in one project produce low emission crumb rubber modified asphalt and warm mix asphalt in a wet and dry process. MTU researchers will evaluate the performance of the material to determine any differences between production methods.

In a second project they will collect and analyze emissions from the production process and analyze those, DEQ’s Mike Marshall said.

MSU will pave a control section of rubber modified asphalt (RMA) and compare the RMA to both a control standard asphalt and a crumb rubber dry mix.

Both projects will pave county roads, Marshall said. The MSU project will be in Ingham County and MTU plans various locations in both the Upper Peninsula and the Northern Lower Peninsula.

Other communities receiving grants include Lapeer and Saginaw counties, the Village of Birch Run and cities of Clio, St. Clair, St. Johns and Vassar.

The village of Birch Run along with the cities of Clio and Vassa will each do two rubberized asphalt projects.

The city of St. Clair will use it’s $113,000 grant to fix segments of three streets and the parking lot of a skate park.

The city will provide a 100 percent match, which brings the total cost of work to $226,000. Money for the match is coming from the city’s local streets fund for the street improvements and from the recreation funds for the parking lot, city officials said.

“We’re going to do this and put together a road program, do some crack sealing and hopefully whittle away at the same problem every Michigan community has: poor roads and no money to fix them,” St. Clair Mayor Bill Cedar said.

© Scrap Tire News, September 2014