Tire-Fire Site Near Winchester No Longer on Superfund List
Posted on: Friday, 7 October 2005, 06:01 CDT
By Calvin R. Trice
The federal government has issued a clean bill of environmental health to the site of a massive tire fire in 1983.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency removed the 22- acre site northwest of Winchester from the Superfund list of the nation's most toxic waste sites, an agency spokeswoman said yesterday.
An arsonist set 7 million tires ablaze on Oct. 31, 1983, starting a fire that would burn for nine months. At its worst, the smoke could be seen from 100 miles away.
The blaze sent toxic, molten rubber across the local landscape. The rubber contaminated a nearby river and a tributary that feeds a trout stream.
The state and federal government spent $11.8 million in a cleanup that lasted 22 years.
The land was owned by Paul E. Rhinehart, who had been collecting tires on his farm for more than a decade for a recycling center he was planning to build on the property. He and his wife have since died.
Melvin Russell Jenkins was convicted in 1987 of setting the fire.
Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch
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