ALLENSPARK, Colo.—The folks who live in a dozen homes here that were served by an old sewer plant had to make a decision last year: Either fund an expensive study to find out whether their sewer plant was still sound or disconnect from the plant and install septic systems.
Fortunately for Rustye Cole and his business, Snowy River Enterprises, the homeowners chose septic tanks. Even more fortunate, Boulder County earlier this year approved the use of Cole’s recycled tires for use in a septic tank’s leach field.
Leach fields, which are traditionally rock, are a key component of a septic system. Waste from a house goes into a septic tank, which removes the solids. The effluent then flow through the leach field—or leachate—where good bacteria eats all the harmful material, so what flows into the ground water will be contaminant-free.
The 12 septic systems installed in Allenspark used more than 20,000 cut-up passenger tires as leachate.
“The nice part about it is we’re dealing with one waste product and another,” said Rick Oppermann of Alpine Environmental Excavating.
Oppermann is one of the 12 Allenspark homeowners, so his company was a natural fit to install the systems. He and his partners have three decades’ experience working with sewer and septic systems.
Oppermann and his partner, Darwin Brownson, worked for 20 years in the city of Louisville’s wastewater division.
Oppermann said he learned about using tire chips as an alternative to rock in a newsletter Boulder County sent to contractors earlier this year. He said he tries to use “green” business practices whenever possible, and the tires worked better than he expected.
Would he ever go back to using rock?
“No,” Oppermann said flatly. “If someone prefers it we would do it, but I don’t know why they’d prefer it. This is a much better product.”
“There’s no losers here,” added Oppermann’s son, Johnathon, who is also in the business. “It works better in the field. It’s easier to work with, and we’ve recycled some 20,000 tires.”
Cole takes pride from hearing that. A former construction worker, he opened his tire recycling business in Mead in 1992. He’s been looking for solutions to keep tires out of landfills ever since.
He discovered that other states have allowed recycled tire chips to be used as leachate, and he saw a great opportunity in Colorado, where about 4.5 million tires are discarded every year.
Environmental studies elsewhere have found that any contaminants released by the tires, over time, are well below safe levels. About 16 states allow the use of tire chips as leachate, Cole said.
He received state approval to use the tires in 2005, but after that, he had to get approval for each county.
He installed his first two test systems in Weld County, which subsequently gave him approval. Then Larimer County gave the OK, followed by Tri-County Health, which covers Adams, Douglas and Arapahoe counties.
“For us, to make it cost-effective to consumers, we decided we would stay in a local county area,” Cole said.
Boulder County then approved the use of tire chips and put a notice in its newsletter, which Oppermann read.
There are many advantages to using 2 1/2-inch tire chips.
First, rubber is about 30 percent more efficient than rock. Unlike rock, the rubber won’t settle, leaving plenty of air pockets that allow the good bacteria to work their magic.
Second, a cubic yard of rock weighs about 2,800 pounds, compared with a cubic yard of tire chips, which weighs about 900 pounds.
The switch allowed drivers to haul tire chips to Allenspark in pickup trucks instead of a semi-truck, which is needed to haul rock. The weight reduction saves fuel and wear on roads, Oppermann said.
“Per weight, (tire chips) are more expensive, but there’s a lot more volume,” Brownson said.
One homeowner in Thornton is installing a 2,400-square-foot system that requires 40 tons of rubber, but would have needed 120 tons of rock, Cole said. That person will save about $1,000 on the project and, for the one system, 4,000 passenger tires will be recycled.
“Even the smallest systems use 750 to 800 passenger tires,” Cole said.
Next, Cole is teaming with a company that has developed a paint that will adhere to tire chips and never wash off. He’ll be selling the colorful chips as landscaping material and mulch. Cole hopes to roll out the program early next year, he said.
“Every tire that comes in here leaves in some form of a product,” Cole said. “We are a 100 percent recycling facility. It took us about 15 years to get to that point.”
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