by Audrey Thomasson
WINDMILL POINT—Troy Wyne was paddle boarding on Little Oyster Creek when he noticed a couple of tires on the river bottom. Aware of the serious environmental toxins caused by decomposing tires, he notified the county.
Brian Barns, Lancaster’s environmental codes compliance officer, and Richard Moncure, Friends of the Rappahannock’s tidal river steward, accompanied Wyne on a canoe trip to survey the creek.
Wyne believes most of the tires ended up in the creek during storm events and others may have been dumped there.
Barnes called it “legacy dumping from the 50s and 60s when it wasn’t known that tires degrade” and before there were county dump sites for waste disposal.
Moncure hooked one of the tires and pulled it into the canoe. He promised to return with his organization and spend a day on the creek helping to clear the tires.
But as the summer approached, Wyne felt he was losing out on the perfect conditions to locate the tires.
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