ST. CLAIR TWP. — Rumpke has never been afraid of getting down and dirty, especially if it will benefit its local customers.

The company recently completed cleaning up what Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials described as the third largest tire site in Ohio. It also is the largest tire cleanup in the state using private funding.

The site in St. Clair Twp. contained more than 3 million tires and originally was owned by D&R Recyclers. The site did not meet Ohio EPA regulations for tire storage and safety.

Rumpke in 2001 took ownership of the site in cooperation with D&R and began processing the tires. Rumpke will now keep the site open to process tires as the only such facility in its Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky territory, said spokeswoman Molly Yeager.

“We had the site, we had the equipment, it just made sense to offer this service to our customers as well,” she said.

Shredding tires is no easy job, said site manager Phillip Lutton.

The site receives about four trucks daily. The crew of six can processes about 90 tons, or 9,000 tires, during their 10-hour work day. Two machines shred the tires first into one-foot chunks and then to pieces of a couple of inches. Wire inside the tire slowly destroys the conveyors that carry the shreds to their final loading pile, requiring them to be replaced about every six months.

Rumpke can only keep nine piles that are 50 by 50 feet wide and 14 feet high per Ohio EPA regulations. Each pile roughly contain 10,000 tires. If they get behind, the excess is shipped to a “friendly competitor” in Columbus, Lutton said.

Today’s shredded tires will line the newest cell of the Colerain Twp. landfill, where most of Butler County’s garbage goes. The tires will serve as a drainage liner, three feet deep spanning more than 20 acres, Yeager said.