The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality provides a standard five-part form for tracking scrapped tires. Each section is required to be filled out by officials responsible for tire disposal.
In this representative form, provided by the city of Austin’s Fleet Services Division, only the first two sections are completed, certified by Fleet’s Tire Program Manager Bill Janousek as the “generator” of the scrapped tires and by Tony Almaguer, Victor Almaguer’s brother, as the person transporting the tires for disposal.
From there, a copy of the form is supposed to follow the tires, first to the processor and then on to the final disposal site. When the final section of the form has been signed and certified at the place of final disposal, the completed form is sent back to the generator, where it must be kept on file for three years.
The city is required under state law to alert TCEQ if it has not received a final manifest form, signed by everyone involved with the disposal of the scrap tires, within 60 days of the date the form was first signed. Although the city has failed to provide any completed forms tracking the disposal of any scrapped tires since 2006, TCEQ says it has not received any complaints from the city about manifest forms not being completed or returned.
This article appears in December 4 • 2009.