Less than a week’s worth of data stopped what three years of protests, regulatory appeals and court hearings couldn’t, reported the Times Argus. International Paper will abandon its efforts to use shredded tires as a supplemental fuel for the boilers at its Ticonderoga, NY mill. In an announcement on November 14, 2006, the company said the use of shredded tires “would not be economically feasible at this time” and it was ceasing tests of the effects of tire burning on air quality.

The announcement was greeted with jubilation in Vermont. Attorney General for Vermont, William Sorrel, said, “This is great news. It’s unfortunate they had to burn tires to pay attention to what we’ve been saying all along.” What Sorrel and other public officials have been saying is that the plant should have been forbidden to test tire burning until an electrostatic precipitator was installed.

As it happened, the plant approached its federal pollution limit for particulate when it began to feed shredded tires into its boilers at a rate of less than 1 ton per hour. Plant officials had planned to burn up to 3 tons per hour. They had sought permission to conduct the test to see if shredded tires would be a viable substitute fuel. Using tires to replace about one-tenth of the No. 6 fuel oil the plant uses now was estimated to save the company about $4 million a year. But the test confirmed that doing so would require expensive upgrades to its pollution control devices.

Opposition to the test burn began when International Paper announced its intentions in the fall of 2003. Critics voiced concern over how the smoke from burned tires would affect the air quality around Lake Champlain. Indeed, the plant, which sits on the lake’s western shore less than a mile from Addison County, is Vermont’s largest polluter, even though it is in New York State. Although the plant was given permission to conduct 14 days of testing by environmental regulators, tires were only burned for a total of about 40 hours over five days. The test was halted after levels of particulates approached federal limits.