Eleven industrial tires each weighing about four tonnes and filled with Styrofoam have washed up near Campbell River, B.C., prompting concern for wildlife in the area.
The Greenways Land Trust, a small non-profit based in the Vancouver Island city about 150 kilometres north of Nanaimo, says it’s trying to remove the tires but it lacks the financial and technical capacity to do so.
“Everything we do is based off of funding from grants that we receive, and we aren’t actually really in the business of beach cleanups,” said Keely Dodds, the organization’s stewardship co-ordinator.
Dodds said she doesn’t know where the tires came from, but she suspects they were part of a large dock or barge and broke away during one of the region’s recent windstorms.
The Styrofoam would have been used to keep the tires afloat, Dodds said, but now it’s likely to break up into smaller pieces and could be eaten by fish and birds.
“You don’t know if they’re ingesting all these plastics and then that’s just going to accumulate over time and be really harmful to them,” she said.
WATCH | This is why Styrofoam can harm shoreline wildlife :
There is also concern about the chemicals that could be leaching from the tires into the water, potentially harming salmon in the area.
Peter Ross, a senior scientist and director of healthy waters at Raincoast Conservation Foundation, says tires have been shown to release the chemical 6PPD-quinone.
“This is a chemical breakdown product from tires that rinses off our roads as cars and trucks drive along and is killing as much as 90 per cent of coho in any given stream when it rains,” Ross said.
The chemical is lethal to other species as well, he added.
Last week nearly 30 volunteers cleaned up about 430 kilograms of water-logged Styrofoam before another storm hit Vancouver Island.
But getting the tires off the beach will be difficult.
“These ones are in a little bit of a tricky spot,” Dodds said.
“They’re quite far down any access to the beach. It’s all private residences back here and no great places to get in.”
Dodds said when three industrial tires washed up on the beach in Campbell River last year, it took seven months and cost $5,000 for the organization to remove them.
It is considering using helicopters to remove the tires, Dodds said, but doesn’t have the money for that type of expense.
The beach is just outside the City of Campbell River.
The local authority, the Strathcona Regional District, told CBC News in an email that “the foreshore is outside of local government jurisdiction and regulated by the province.”
When CBC News reached out to multiple provincial ministries, the Environment Ministry responded to say “the ministry is aware of the debris and local efforts are underway to remove it from the marine environment.”
Ross, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation scientist, said more needs to be done to hold polluters accountable.
“Someone knows where these came from,” he said. “So, somebody should be held to account for cleaning them up.”
