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\u201cMy life,\u201d says Julie Slavet, \u201cis all about tires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slavet is exaggerating \u2014 but only slightly. As the executive director of the Tookany\/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership<\/a>, part of her job is to help improve Tacony Creek Park, a 300-acre preserve in Northeast Philadelphia. And for the last couple years, that\u2019s meant dealing with illegally dumped tires.<\/p>\n The last time they appeared, she says, was early this fall. There were around 500 of them, scattered underneath the Whitaker Avenue bridge, a popular spot for illegal dumping. \u201cPeople dump in places where they\u2019re not going to get noticed, and there aren\u2019t a lot of eyes on the bridges at night,\u201d she says. \u201cTrucks pull up, back up, and they just dump the tires over the bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n Tire dumping isn\u2019t just a problem in Tacony Creek Park \u2014 it\u2019s all over the city. In December 2021<\/a>, dumpers unloaded nearly 4,000 tires \u2014 about 80,000 pounds worth \u2014 at a business in Frankford. And in October 2023, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported pulling<\/a> more than 3,000 tires out of the Schuylkill River during the second phase of a dredge project. In 2022, according to the Mayor\u2019s Office, the City cleaned up 2,672 tons of dumped tires.<\/p>\n The tire dumping problem is just one facet of a larger illegal dumping issue that has long plagued the city. But tires present a special danger. Tires collect water, which makes them an ideal breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes. They\u2019re also highly flammable. In 1996, a fire famously erupted<\/a> at a lot under I-95 where a pile of at least 10,000 tires was being illegally stored. In 2021, a huge pile of tires at a junkyard in Southwest Philly went up in flames<\/a>, sending smoke into the air that was visible for miles.<\/p>\n The Tookany\/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership organizes weekly cleanups in the park, Slavet says. But tires, unlike smaller, lighter forms of trash that regularly turn up in the park, can\u2019t be simply picked up and bagged by volunteers. \u201cGetting rid of tires is not pleasant at all. It\u2019s really hard work,\u201d she says. So, as she\u2019s done many times before, Slavet called Parks & Recreation, which took about a month to finish the job. READ MORE\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n