The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (Cal Recycle) is providing funding and paving material that includes recycled tyres to repair fire damaged roads in Calaveras County, California.
Cal Recycle Offering Much-Needed Help
Cal Recycle said that it is also providing paving assistance to areas damaged by last year’s fires in Lake County.
In both Lake and Calaveras counties, roads were damaged by heavy trucks and other equipment as the fires were fought and during the clean-up process afterward. Potholes were filled as part of the debris clean-up process. However, in some areas, roads remained in poor condition. Cal Recycle offered to provide further roadway repair through its Rubberised Asphalt Concrete grant programme.
The rubberised concrete is made by mixing ground-up used tyres with asphalt and other materials. It has proven to be a durable, safe, and quiet surface and has been used successfully on roads throughout California.
Cal Recycle Director Scott Smithline said, “Rubberised asphalt concrete keeps waste tyres out of landfills and is an excellent road surfacing material for projects like these.”
Rubberised concrete was used to repair about six-tenths of a mile of private roads in Calaveras County. The project cost $500,000 and was paid for from Cal Recycle’s Tire Recycling Management Fund.
Since the Calaveras County project involved private roads, rather than county roads, the $500,000 included both road preparation and the RAC overlay, all of which were conducted by Cal Recycle’s contractor.
A two-inch rubberized asphalt concrete overlay uses about 2,000 scrap tyres per lane mile. To date, California has used more than 10 million waste tyres in RAC paving projects.
