Photo courtesy of Roanoke County

Brian Perkins has been cited by the state Department of Environmental Quality and Roanoke County officials for the 4,000 to 5,000 waste tires that are piled on a site he leases in West Roanoke County.

Brian Perkins insists -- heatedly, sometimes -- that he's trying to be part of the solution to a problem, not the cause of one.

And it's a problem Roanoke County knows something about: tire piles.

The subject of illegal tire dumps is a sensitive one in the county. In 2002, after more than a decade of public fretting about the potential for a disaster, a single illegal dump containing between 3 million and 4 million tires caught fire in South County.

One of the largest such blazes ever in Virginia, it burned for a month and cost millions of dollars to clean up. That fire was the catalyst for a major state clean-up effort in Western Virginia.

By comparison, the 4,000 to 5,000 tires now piled on business property Perkins leases in West Roanoke County wouldn't be an environmental hazard, he says, if the county would just let him conduct the tire recycling business he's already sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into setting up.

But the state Department of Environmental Quality, the county's zoning administrator and the entire board of supervisors disagree, and -- while negotiations are continuing -- Perkins is under orders to close up shop and get rid of the tires.

The Virginia Waste Tire Program, which cleans up tire piles around the state, only covers piles that date to before 1993, when the state's recycling program began. That means new ones that develop -- such as the one tied to Perkins -- are considered illegal. Failure to comply with removing the piles could result in felony charges, a fine of $100,000 and civil penalties as high as $32,500 a day. But, said Jerry Ford, an enforcement specialist with the DEQ office in Roanoke, those are the statutory maximums and not necessarily an indication of the actual penalties usually handed down.

In fact, as is the case with Perkins, DEQ and local officials generally try to negotiate what's known as a consent order, the primary goal of which is to get the tires removed, not to inflict severe penalties, Ford said.

As is also commonly the case, Perkins' piles of tires came to government officials' attention after public complaints, according to information presented at the Jan. 28 meeting of the board of supervisors.

Perkins' accumulation of tires is the leftovers from 15 years of running a now-closed used auto parts business, he told the board of supervisors in January. He's tried to keep each pile below the state requirement of 5,000 square feet, he said, and all are at least 40 feet apart and within 500 feet of a fire hydrant.

Now, he said, he wants to start a new business: He wants to shred tires for recycling, and said he has spent almost half a million dollars on equipment to do that.

But when the property he rents was rezoned from agricultural to industrial in 1987, the owner at the time submitted a proffer limiting the use of the property to "truck repair and storage." It's a limitation that's still in effect.

Perkins' attorney, Lance Hale, argued in January that tires should be considered like any other truck parts, whose storage was allowed on the site.

County officials disagreed, noting that their zoning ordinance, as well as state law, treats tires in a special category with separate, more stringent regulation than other auto or truck parts.

For instance, the state says anyone who stores more than 100 tires must have a permit from the DEQ, something Perkins doesn't have and can't get unless the county rezones his property to allow his proposed recycling operation.

The county began investigating Perkins' business in January 2008 and in March of that year sent a warning letter to the property's owners in Delaware.

Perkins met with DEQ officials in April and, according to county records, continued to acquire tires and store them on the property until August when he was sent a "notice of violation" letter from the DEQ. Another meeting followed in September, then a letter from the zoning administrator in November gave Perkins 10 days to clean up the site or file an appeal.

On Jan. 28, the supervisors heard that appeal.

Perkins insisted he was trying to create a "green business," re-using a product that is notoriously difficult to recycle.

"I've spent $400,000 on two pieces of equipment to solve the problem, but he [Zoning Administrator John Murphy] won't let me," he told the board. "He won't let me shred tires and turn them into a product I can sell."

He said he had traveled as far as Australia to find a market for the shredded tires, which can be turned into "crumb rubber" and used for such things as fuel and landfill liner.

"I didn't intend on this mess to be there," Perkins said. "It was just the way the cookies crumbled."

Ford said the DEQ is "actively working with the county and with Mr. Perkins' attorney to get a viable plan to get them in compliance."

"To the best of our knowledge," Ford said, "as we are trying to work through it, as far as we know it's not getting any worse. Now we just have to figure out how best to get it removed and processed."