Tire-Free Rivers Tireside Chats: Piled Higher and Deeper

I'm surprised at the number of stories about tire dumping I hear when I wear my official Tire-Free Rivers T-shirt. Just this morning, Mark Visbach admired my shirt, then related this legend to me over coffee.

"I remember back about ten years or so ago, they were still dumping old tires into the headpond. You know, the community just upriver from the Mactaquac dam on the Saint John river.

'It seems all year long, the local folks hoarded all the old tires they could find from the body shops and junkyards. Then every day after New Years, they'd sell raffle tickets to the general public.

The dam on the Saint John River at Mactaquac.

Buyers would fill in their best guess exactly which day, hour, minute and second the pile would sink through the rotting ice. One could buy as many tickets as one wanted, just fill in a different time and hand over your buck. If your ticket was the closest, you'd get half the pot, and some local charity would get the other half.

Come March 15 or so every spring, they'd truck all the tires onto the thick ice out to the middle of the headpond, where the water is over 100 feet deep. Crews worked like monkeys all day, stacking tires in a pile and tying them down with nylon ropes as they went. One rope was tied from the pile to a clock on shore, to record the moment of submergence.

Then when every last tire was tied down, the community watched with mounting interest, hoping to witness the exact moment the pile sank to its eternal rest, or until the next ice age, whichever comes first. Each was hoping to win the big jackpot.

It was all for a good cause, I'm sure. How many years did this go on? Then one day, some enlightened saint whom history has forgotten convinced them to stop."

I try not to judge yesterday's deeds through today's eyes. Their mindset was different. They saw the world in a different way.

But all those tires. I wonder if there's any way to get them out? Maybe the nylon is still intact, and they could be hooked out. Could the tire recyclers manage the glut?

Tire-Free Rivers is a non-profit volunteer crusade. Tire-Free Rivers is not affiliated with anything else. Nobody makes any money doing this.