Civil Engineering - Erosion
The tires are out of the environment and are providing additional public benefit. Lake Carlsbad now has beautiful sidewalks along the bank and is accessible in areas that it wasn't before.
The City of Carlsbad, New Mexico and the County in which it resides
were trying to find a way to deal with tire disposal at their landfill. The tires were
taking up too much room! The City reviewed tire recycling options and decided to purchase
a tire baler with a grant from the State of New Mexico. Encore Systems, Inc. was awarded
a competitive bid to provide tire balers for the State of New Mexico.
The City was also experiencing an erosion control problem on its popular recreational area, Lake Carlsbad, which was created from the Pecos River, one of the few navigable rivers in New Mexico. The river is dammed in two places creating Lake Carlsbad which is four miles of lake and eight miles of shoreline. The banks were 10 to 30 feet away from impacting fairways at a golf course alongside the river and endangering people's lives who walked along the bank due to undercutting.
The City
decided to incorporate baled tires into the erosion control project acting as "Giant
Building Blocks". The project, beginning in 1997, took the river down to cut a
channel to form a new embankment along 4,000 feet of eroding frontage. A concrete footer
was laid and the tire bales were laid in the wet cement, then shot with cement.
"They looked like big concrete blocks." said John Tully, city administrator.
On these walls, the city created 10-foot sidewalks and laminated them with native stone.
The project utilized 250,000 tires. The City has had visitors from all over the world to
view this project. The City continues to bale tires and plans are underway to finish the
erosion control along the remaining river bank.
The tires
are out of the environment and are providing additional public benefit. Lake Carlsbad now
has beautiful sidewalks along the bank and is accessible in areas that it wasn't before.
Edward L. Drews of Encore Systems, Inc. was design consultant on this project.
Contact Encore Systems for more information.