Yough River cleanup snags nearly 700 tires

A two-mile stretch of the Youghiogheny River along the Allegheny-Westmoreland border is cleaner after close to 700 tires were removed this summer by a group of volunteers.

”It’s an effort that not only beautifies the river, but also creates a healthier environment for people, fish and wildlife in our area,” said Lisa Cimbala of Irwin, who organized the cleanup with her husband, Alan Hill.

Members of the Yough River Sports People’s Association used its dock in the South Versailles village of Coulter as its launching point for the cleanup, which stretched upstream into Westmoreland County and downstream in Allegheny County, Cimbala said. The sports association gave the group permission to store the 673 recovered tires on their property until they could be hauled away for recycling late last month, Cimbala said.

This year’s “catch” of tires was better than last year, when the group of volunteers removed about 512 tires from a section of the river along the Allegheny-Westmoreland border, Cimbala said.

Some of the spots along that section of the river are shallow, so “we were able to walk further into the center of the river” to remove the tires, Cimbala said.

During this year’s cleanup, Cimbala said her husband found a Firestone Balloon Tire that he believes was almost 100 years old because the company started making them in 1922, Cimbala said.

“We found one tire made by Tigar Tyres, made for a car called the Yugo, which was made in Yugoslavia and imported to America from 1985 to 1992,” Hill said. They also found a tire made in Jeannette by the Pennsylvania Rubber Company.

Having kayaked the section of the river where they cleaned last year, Cimbala said she did not believe people are still dumping the tires along that area of the Youghiogheny.

“I believe they (tires) get pushed downriver during the winter’s high and fast water and I believe the sand and mud at the bottom shifts, revealing more tires,” Cimbala said.

Recycling of these tires is a cooperative project between Bridgestone Group’s Tires4Ward program and Liberty Tire of Braddock, Cimbala said. When tires are gathered as a community project from either land or water, Bridgestone will cover the cost to have them recycled. Bridgestone contracted with Liberty Tire to haul away the tires and take them to the company’s recycling plant in Ohio, Cimbala said.

“Without Bridgestone’s program, we would not have been able to remove any of these tires because of the cost to recycle each tire,” Cimbala said.

Bridgestone said on its website that 47% of the used tires globally are recycled for use as materials and 20% are used in the energy industry. About 31% end up in landfills, in storage or dumped, according to Bridgestone.

The sports people association is not the only organization that has undertaken Youghiogheny River tire cleanups. The Mountain Watershed Association’s Youghiogheny Riverkeeper program has been pulling tires from other parts of the river, such as between West Newton and Cedar Creek Park in Rostraver. The organization said it removed some 1,000 tires from the river in 2019 and 2020.

After leading two summer cleanups of tires spread in and along the Youghiogheny River, Cimbala said they want to do a third one next year, focusing on “Tire Island” in the river near the Turner Valley soccer field complex in North Huntingdon. They could paddle upstream of rapids in the shallow river, put tires on their boat, then float down to an area where it would be accessible to other boats, Cimbala said.

“As long as there are tires in the river to be picked up, we will continue to do it,” Cimbala said.

For the Yough Sports People, attempting to do a cleanup further upstream in the Sutersville area of Westmoreland would be a challenge because they need permission to stack the tires for a few months in a place where a Liberty Tire truck can collect them. The Sutersville area is too far from the dock in Coulter to make it feasible to transport the tires by boat downriver, Cimbala said.

“Slowly, and with the help of numerous volunteers, the Yough is becoming tire-free. When it is, what a healthy and beautiful river we will have,” she said.