Richland, Washington Tackles Large Waste Tire Pile Cleanup

Washington’s Richland City Council has approved a service agreement with Liberty Tire Recycling LLC to clean up the largest waste tire pile in the state, spread over a roughly five-acre property with about 280,000 cubic feet of tires.

In 2005, Northwest Tire Recycling set up operations on the site to bale tires and compress them into EcoBlocks for use in road construction, retaining walls and shooting ranges. It operated for two years without a business license before closing permanently in 2007 leaving thousands of tires and tire bales on the site.

Richland didn’t create the situation, but it took on responsibility for the legal steps necessary to take action on private property.

In 2024, Richland secured a Benton County Superior Court order allowing it to clean it up. Order in hand, it worked with Mid-Columbia lawmakers to lobby the 2026 legislature to pay for the work.

State lawmakers appropriated $3.2 million during the 2026 legislative session for the project. That included $1.6 million from the Waste Tire Removal Account and $1.6 million from the Model Toxics Control Capital Account.

The number of tires on the property remains uncertain. The city estimated as many as 1,471,000 tires, while Liberty Tire estimated about 1.5 million loose and baled tires, or about 15,600 tons.

Under the proposed agreement, Liberty Tire would provide labor, vehicles, loading equipment, transportation, supervision and other materials needed to remove the tires, take them to authorized facilities and provide records including weight tickets, manifests, transportation records and recycling or disposal receipts

The agreement set total compensation at no more than $3,112,390 and required the work to be finished by June 30, 2027.

The city will be reimbursed for the work by the Washington State Department of Ecology.

© Scrap Tire News, October 2026