“My life,” says Julie Slavet, “is all about tires.”
Slavet is exaggerating — but only slightly. As the executive director of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, 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’s meant dealing with illegally dumped tires.
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. “People dump in places where they’re not going to get noticed, and there aren’t a lot of eyes on the bridges at night,” she says. “Trucks pull up, back up, and they just dump the tires over the bridge.”
Tire dumping isn’t just a problem in Tacony Creek Park — it’s all over the city. In December 2021, dumpers unloaded nearly 4,000 tires — about 80,000 pounds worth — at a business in Frankford. And in October 2023, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported pulling more than 3,000 tires out of the Schuylkill River during the second phase of a dredge project. In 2022, according to the Mayor’s Office, the City cleaned up 2,672 tons of dumped tires.
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’re also highly flammable. In 1996, a fire famously erupted 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, sending smoke into the air that was visible for miles.
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’t be simply picked up and bagged by volunteers. “Getting rid of tires is not pleasant at all. It’s really hard work,” she says. So, as she’s done many times before, Slavet called Parks & Recreation, which took about a month to finish the job. READ MORE…