- The Problem: US waterways, exemplified by Kentucky’s Red River, are heavily polluted with discarded tires, which take decades to decompose and leach toxic substances.
- Scale of Pollution: The U.S. discards nearly 300 million tires annually, with millions unaccounted for, often ending up in rivers. Kentucky alone generates 4 million waste tires each year, with 1 million going missing.
- The “River Cowboy”: Russ Miller, nicknamed the “River Cowboy,” has spent decades pulling an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tires from Kentucky’s rivers. He co-founded “Friends of Red River” (FORR) in 1996, a grassroots cleanup group.
- Cleanup Methods: Miller devised innovative ways to make tires buoyant for collection and leads grueling cleanup missions, sometimes involving challenging rapids and long portages.
- Reasons for Dumping: Despite being illegal, tires are dumped due to convenience, calculated schemes by “professional dumpers,” lack of access to legal disposal in rural areas, and an ingrained cultural mindset of rivers as “out-of-mind” dumping grounds.
- Environmental Impact: Tires in waterways pose significant harm to public health and aquatic wildlife by leaching toxic substances.
- Growing Awareness and Action: States are starting to act, with Connecticut passing an EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) law for tire manufacturers. Florida is undertaking a massive project to remove millions of tires from the ocean. Kentucky recently passed a bipartisan senate resolution acknowledging the scale of tire pollution, partly due to advocacy by the Kentucky Waterways Alliance. New chemical processes are being explored to break down used tires into useful precursors for epoxy resins, offering a potential sustainable disposal solution.
- Hope and Ongoing Effort: Despite the immense scale of the problem and the continuous dumping, Miller and other volunteers remain hopeful that increased awareness and sustained efforts will lead to significant change and restoration of the waterways.
U.S. Rivers Are Full Of Dumped Tires & The ‘River Cowboy’ Won’t Stand For It
Climate News Now 
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