As the recall campaign against Governor Gray Davis ran its course, of all the oddities it has wrought none is stranger than the possibility that it may have long term consequences for the success of the state's tire recycling programs.

This is a story of gubernatorial appointees supporting a five-year plan for California's tire programs only to have a key element—funding for research and support of tire-derived fuel (TDF) projects—rejected by the State Legislature and, ultimately, by the Governor.  It is a story of how electoral politics may have trumped programs endorsed by tire program staff, many scientists, and the six-member California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) that develops, funds and oversees the state's tire programs.

California Becomes a Model for Tire Recycling

In the past few years, California has moved away from its role as a laggard among states dealing with illegal tire pile problems and spotty markets for recycled tire feedstock and products.  Aside from the state directly cleaning up millions of tires and encouraging property owners to remediate their own backyard stockpiles under the threat of legal action, two huge tire fires—one in 1998 and the other in 1999—were responsible for eradicating twelve million or more tires. 

The conflagrations, however, also lit a fire under the California State Legislature, leading to the passage of a major tire bill that increased the fee on the sale of every new tire from 25-cents to one dollar, including tires on new and used vehicles sold in the state.  The bill also required that the CIWMB develop and implement a series of new programs with an annual budget of about $32 million. 

Invigorated with the new cash windfall, the CIWMB embarked on an ambitious and diversified effort to keep an increasing number of tires out of landfills.  The state had something to prove, since as recently as 1997 California recycled barely half of the 33 million scrap tires it generated (see Table 1).  That same year, most of the tires that were diverted—approximately nine million—were used as fuel for an energy company and in four cement plants.

Table 1:  California tire diversion rates since 1997, in millions

(Source:  CIWMB, 2003)

By 2001, California generated 34.8 million waste tires and the diversion rate had increased to almost 75 percent, with the state relying less on TDF (about 16%, or approximately 5.2 million tires) and more on crumb rubber, civil engineering chips and alternative daily cover.  The drop-off in TDF was due primarily to the closure of a tires-to-energy plant in Central California

Nevertheless, in 2003, the state saw a resurgence of interest in TDF, with three cement plants and one cogeneration facility receiving direct or indirect assistance from state-sponsored tire recycling grants.  Yet, even with these plants starting to use tires to supplement their traditional fuel sources, energy recovery from tires will constitute less than one-third of the waste tires generated annually in California.  That compares with a 41 percent TDF use nationwide.

State Supports Market Diversification

The CIWMB considers diversifying tire recycling products and technologies as a key to building sustainable markets.  Over the past decade, the Board has promoted molded rubber products and asphalt rubber over TDF, which was thought to have already established a beachhead.  Between 1992 and 2002, the CIWMB assisted tire diversion through a series of grants and contracts with the following funding:

This year, the proposed funding ratio was along those same lines in the legislatively-mandated "Five-Year Plan for Tire Programs" drafted by the CIWMB staff.  The plan, which requires an update every two years, not only focuses on tire program funding over the next half decade, but also summarizes the Board's past efforts to eradicate illegal tire piles and develop new markets for tire products; and it proposes new programs for research, market development and enforcement.

The plan presented to the Board in March 2003 was costly and ambitious, totaling more than $150 million over the next five years.  As in past plans, some funding for research and grants to promote TDF was included, but it constituted a comparatively small portion of the overall budget:

Opposition to TDF Arises

The proposed spending on energy recovery, although small in comparison to other tire recycling technologies, was still too much for some in the environmental community.  The Sierra Club (San Francisco) in particular has fought long and hard against the use of whole tires as a fuel supplement in cement kilns, arguing that tire combustion increases levels of toxic air emissions, including dioxins and furans. This year, the Sierra Club enlisted a politically-connected ally, Californians Against Waste (Sacramento, California).  Additionally, they had the ear of the CIWMB member representing the environmental community, Michael Paparian, who was a lobbyist for the Sierra Club before his appointment.

When confronted with the Five-Year Plan, Paparian didn’t propose an outright ban on the use of TDF but argued strongly that the Board should not fund research into TDF or provide grants to facilitate its use.  He said that other types of tire recycling, such as asphalt rubber, the manufacture of molded rubber products and civil engineering uses of tire chips should be the Board's priorities.

The California cement industry, which currently has three plants using whole tires for up to 15% of its fuel (coal comprises the rest of the fuel), and has two plants expecting to use tires to supplement their fuel in the near future, pointed out that what little funding was proposed in the Five-Year Plan was already dwarfed by money in support of other tire technologies.  They argued that regional air quality districts—the most stringent regulators of air emissions in the nation—scrupulously monitor all of their facilities and that the introduction of tires as a fuel supplement has shown to lower nitrogen oxides in plant emissions. 

The cement industry has long touted the use of tires as a supplemental fuel because not only do tires combust with a higher BTU rating than coal, but the ash resulting from combustion is incorporated in the cement.  Additionally, the inclusion of oxidized steel belts and beadwire in the mix reduces the need to introduce supplemental iron in the manufacture of cement.  In fact, cement industry representatives are fond of saying that, while crumb rubber processors send up to 40 percent of the unusable portion of a tire to landfills, cement kilns "use everything but the squeal."

Representatives from cement plants and cogeneration facilities argued that singling out one technology and making it more difficult for them to divert tires from landfills was unjust.  They also pointed out that the use of tires in combustion displaced coal or petroleum coke as a fuel, both non-renewable energy sources which are seldom extracted in an environmentally-friendly manner.

The Five-Year Plan is Adopted

After several marathon hearings during the spring of 2003, it became clear that a proposed ban on funding TDF projects and research was not going to fly.  Steve Jones, the Board's representative from the waste management industry, spoke in opposition each time Paparian proposed changes to the plan, particularly criticizing the notion that combusting tires as a fuel supplement was less beneficial than other forms of recycling.  Jones forcefully argued that TDF was simply a better disposal option than landfilling. 

His contention that without TDF as a fuel source millions of California waste tires would fill landfills each year was persuasive, and it soon became clear that the other four Board Members were in his camp.  By mid-May, the Board unanimously adopted the Five-Year Plan.  Paparian reluctantly voted for it after receiving support for some changes he sought in areas other than TDF.

While Paparian acquiesced, the Sierra Club and Californians Against Waste (CAW) did not.  In a letter to the CIWMB, CAW said that it would continue to oppose the Five-Year Plan by going to the State Legislature and urging them to eliminate funding for TDF research and projects.

Environmental Groups Approach the Legislature

A week after the Board approved the plan, representatives from the Sierra Club and CAW began lobbying sympathetic legislators to insert anti-TDF language in a state budget trailer bill.  While the California state budget and its multi-billion dollar deficit was the source of endless debate, a budget trailer bill is simply a vehicle to explain how agencies are to spend the money allocated to them.  In this case, the environmental groups urged that the State Legislature refuse to allow the CIWMB to "expend any funds for activities that provide support or research for the incineration of tires."

A sympathetic Legislature, dominated by environmentally-conscious Democrats, quickly included the language in its budget trailer bill and sent it on to the Governor for his signature or veto.

Recall Politics Take Hold

The timing couldn’t have been better for the anti-TDF groups.  By early summer, the recall campaign had heated up and the Governor began reaching out to constituent groups that he previously ignored.  During his first term, Davis wanted to demonstrate that he was fiscally conservative and moderately pro-business, a strategy to achieve national prominence that worked well for a former Arkansas Governor.  However, by early summer, negative poll numbers and the omnipresent recall all but eliminated any Clintonesque ambitions that Davis may have held.

In an attempt to survive the ignominy of being the first California Governor in history to be recalled, the Governor began supporting legislative initiatives that he had previously shunned.  To bolster his environmental support, Davis asked no questions about the budget trailer bill language that prohibited funding of TDF research and projects, and signed it into law.  By doing so, however, he flatly rejected the priorities that his four appointees to the CIWMB had just approved.

What Now?

With the loss of money for TDF research and grants, the cement and cogeneration industries, TDF equipment manufacturers and TDF processors all stand to lose state assistance to bolster their industries.  However, given the small amount of funding that was actually proposed by CIWMB staff in the plan, the financial hit is not what irks TDF proponents.  More important is the message the Legislature and Governor sent out, namely that combustion of tires for energy recovery is a bad thing. 

Forget the programs and the funding, say those supporting energy recovery from tires.  With a new law impugning TDF technology, these groups fear far more draconian measures, such as an outright ban of TDF in California by future legislatures and Governors.  That apprehension, whether it is ultimately realized, may be just as dependent upon whether other tire recycling markets expand and mature without governmental help.

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