The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is in the road business and Allen County is going to benefit from that.
The Allen County Engineers Office received a grant from the Ohio EPA to use recycled tires in asphalt for a 4-mile paving job in northern Allen County. The Scrap Tire Grant is a 100-percent match which will pay for half of the $312,000 project on Columbus Grove Bluffton Road, west of the village to State Route 696.
Allen County Roadway Engineer David Louth explains, “Where scrap tires, instead of being taken to the landfill, they’re being ground up and added as an ingredient into our asphalt mix. It’s to improve the pavement, make it strong, make it a little more elastic if you will. More rubberized in hopes to improve pavement life with that.”
The use of the rubber hot mix will keep approximately 3,600 scrap tires out of the landfill for this 4-mile project. They have just gone out for bid on the project with construction to start in the spring.
This from the Allen County Engineers Office: There is the equivalent of approximately 12# of scrap tire rubber in a used passenger tire. There is approximately 1 scrap tire in one ton of GTR (Ground Tire Rubber Hot Mix).
That means there will be approximately 43,548 lbs. or 21.7 tons of rubber in the hot mix for our project, which equals about 3,629 scrap tires used in the hot mix and not delivered to a land fill.
