Fairfax County residents frustrated with tires being illegally dumped along commuter line
Illegally dumped tires sparking outrage in Fairfax County
It’s really hard to miss: any time you look out of a car or train window — you can see all kinds of garbage along the tracks or highways. But in Fairfax County, the latest outrage is over a mountain of tires is piling up along a well-traveled commuter line. FOX 5's Bob Barnard reports.
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. - It’s really hard to miss: any time you look out of a car or train window — you can see all kinds of garbage along the tracks or highways. But in Fairfax County, the latest outrage is over a mountain of tires is piling up along a well-traveled commuter line.
FOX 5 inspected the scene from underneath the Mixing Bowl in Springfield, along the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks that carry VRE’s Manassas line — a somewhat hidden place that’s become a dumping ground for car and truck tires.
What we don't know:
Who’s dumping them is anybody’s guess, but it looks professional. It doesn't appear to be some random person dumping a tire here or there.
Perhaps it’s a company getting paid to get rid of tires and instead of taking them to an official recycling center and paying the fee, they're dumping them from the shoulder of the I-395 ramp to Old Keene Mill Road.
Virginia highway officials have said that "VDOT is aware of the situation and will be working on the cleanup since it is located within our right of way."
Local perspective:
A Virginia commuter, Jason Miller, who saw the mound of tires outside his train window told FOX 5 about the issue.
"The amount of trash being dumped here is not cool," Miller says. "I understand it happens everywhere. Just makes it look like a bad place to live and that’s not what we want. We want to live in a nice place."
Miller says he and his wife have been filing complaints with Fairfax County.
A Norfolk Southern spokesperson told us: "We can confirm that NS teams worked to clean up the tires when we were made aware."
VRE says their service has never been interrupted. Routine inspections and maintenance would take care of any that end up on the tracks.
Jason Miller says: "How long would that take to unload a hundred… hundreds of tires and roll them down the hill? I mean, at the end of Versar Center Drive there’s two that are in the tree 30 feet in the air. I mean that’s just brazen. I can’t imagine."
Miller adds, "Is it a business that’s around here that’s just dumping tires so they don’t have to pay their disposal fees? Who knows, but we won’t know until we get somebody on camera to catch ’em."
Unfortunately, there are no cameras in this area or up on the ramp where the tires are being dumped from. Illegally discarding tires is a crime in Virginia, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.
Official statements:
Fairfax County officials sent FOX 5 this statement:
"Fairfax County’s Department of Code Compliance investigated the location in July and confirmed that the tires were situated on property under state management. Since the land is not county property, we could not issue a violation. Even though the tires were on state property, our Operation Stream Shield program did assist with cleanup efforts in August as a courtesy to protect the adjacent environment. As the owner of the I-395 right-of-way, the state is responsible for the current cleanup and for evaluating long-term prevention measures." – Fairfax County spokesperson.
VDOT sent FOX 5 this statement:
"Residents can always report trash in our right of way to my.vdot.virginia.gov or 800-for-road. Illegal dumping is always an issue on our roads, in fact we had a littering campaign not too long ago starting late October into November." VDOT says it shared the following in a news release at that time:
That receipt that flew out of the car window or that cigarette butt someone flicked out on the road may not seem like a big deal, but it adds up. And it’s costing VDOT 10 million dollars a year to clean up. Rather than spend that money on picking up trash, VDOT could fix 81,660 potholes, or pave 80 lane miles of roadway, or paint 21,200 miles of lane markings, or complete a road improvement project.
VDOT collected more than 360,000 bags of trash from its nearly 60,000 miles of state-maintained roadways last year — enough trash to fill over 15 Olympic-size swimming pools. However, even that amount represents just a fraction of the total litter problem in Virginia."