Old tires pulled from Japanese Gulch

Published 11:12 am Thursday, August 5, 2010

Four workers waded through a mound of tires that rose above their heads and filled a dry streambed. They stacked 30 tires in a row and laced them together with a metal cord.

A few minutes later, a crane sitting on top a steep embankment over the stream lowered its hook and lifted the tire necklace out of Japanese Gulch and into a trailer destined for a tire recycling company.

After years of complaints by hikers, bikers and nature advocates, workers began on Tuesday removing about 3,000 tires from Japanese Gulch, a maze of privately owned trails, streams and forest on the border of Mukilteo and Everett.

“It’s going to be great to get them out of there and removed so they’re no longer polluting Puget Sound,” said Debby McGehee, a board member of the Japanese Gulch Group. “It’s pretty shocking how many tires have been dumped there.”

The tires were thrown in the gulch 30 to 40 years ago by a man who operated a junkyard on the embankment, said Kara Steward, who helped organize the removal for the state Department of Ecology. The man sold the property about a decade ago, and rather than spend thousands of dollars trying to track him down and force him to pay to clean up the gulch, the Department of Ecology spent $30,000 removing the tires, Steward said.

A $1 fee on the sale of new tires is funding the project and others throughout the state. Since 2007, the department has removed about 4.8 million tires from 126 locations. Another 66 projects are scheduled.

The Department of Ecology has been working for a year with the cities of Everett and Mukilteo and several agencies to arrange the cleanup.

Volunteers who use the trails winding through the gulch had planned to remove the tires themselves in 2005. But the city of Everett and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which owns property in the gulch, had concerns about safety and liability issues, so the cleanup was canceled.

Once the tires are removed this week, volunteers plan to spread gravel and plant sword fern, snow and salmon berries, and other native plants in the gulch to tempt salmon back into the stream.

“It’s a respite,” said project manager Paul Crane of the city of Everett. “It’s a little bit of a wild mountain gorge in an urban area, which is hard to find these days … It’s a wonderful public amenity that should be restored.”

Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292, kmanry@heraldnet.com.