Junked Tires Protect Against Lagoon Spills

Junked Tires Protect Against Lagoon Spills MANURE HANDLING Storage 19-6-34 Here's a new use for old tires: Bury them in a ditch around liquid manure lagoons to protect against spills. Tire-filled buffer zones provide effective protection at a fraction of the cost of conventional clay or plastic drainage tiling, according to Dodger Enterprises. The Fort Dodge, Iowa, company has set up experiments using some 60,000 whole, chipped and shredded tires. "It won't stop a major spill when a la-goon or storage system collapses, but it'll serve as an effective early warning and containment system for smaller spills or major seepage from lagoons," says president Ernie Kersten. The idea is to dig a 2 or 3-ft. wide trench all the way around a lagoon, making it 2 ft. deeper than the lagoon's lowest point and with a 1 to 2? slope from each corner to the middle of each side. A standpipe, or monitoring well, is installed at that lowest point on each side to detect seepage and pump it back into the lagoon, Kersten notes. The trench is filled with 6 to 8 ft. of shredded or chipped tires and is then covered over with earth. Tire-filled trenches require a lot less labor to set up and they're safer for workers who don't have to enter trenches to lay pipe, risking cave-ins. Although the system hasn't yet been approved by the Iowa DNR, Kersten expects that it will be soon. The cost of such a system is expected to run about half of conventional plastic or clay pipe drainage systems, Kersten says. Several interested pork producers have already contacted the company, he notes. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dodger Enterprises, 1525 Ave. 0, Fort Dodge, Iowa 50501 (ph 515 576-1767; fax 3343).

To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.