BATON ROUGE, La. — About 65% of a 10-day-old fire at a shuttered tire processing plant in central Louisiana has been doused with water and smothered with dirt, reducing a thick plume of black smoke that had been visible for miles, state environmental regulators said.
But spots continue to flare up at the Cottonport Monofill complex in Avoyelles Parish and it’s not clear when the smoldering fire will be fully extinguished.
Meanwhile, 1,500 inmates remain evacuated from a nearby state prison. They fled the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport four days into the fire, on Jan. 20, after winds shifted and sent black smoke into the state prison 300 yards to the south of the isolated tire complex.
“I don’t have an exact date when we think the fire will be out. We’re hoping within a few days,” said Greg Langley, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The fire began Jan. 16.
With the fire still burning, state investigators also haven’t had a chance to examine the site and determine a cause, said Ashley Rodrigue, spokeswoman for the Louisiana State Fire Marshal’s Office.
DEQ records show more than 100,000 unprocessed waste tires had been stored at the facility in long piles 10 to 20 feet high. There were also large piles of chopped up tire bits, known as monofill.
Since mid-2019, DEQ has had Cottonport Monofill under a compliance order to clean up the tires and monofill chips as part of the facility’s closure.
The bits are used for earthen fill, road material and other purposes under DEQ’s Waste Tire Program. The state pays companies to recycle the monofill in authorized uses.
At one point early on, black smoke from the fire could be seen as far away as La. 1 in Marksville, several miles to the north of Cottonport, residents have said.
But Langley said Wednesday that firefighting efforts have cut the smoke by 90% since the fire began. The remaining smoke is still producing some tiny particles that are drifting off the property.
Firefighters have been working the fire section by section, dousing one piece with water and then smothering it with dirt. Langley added that firefighters have also brought in a marsh buggy to push the burning monofill chips into a large pond on the property.
“You can put water on the chips or can put the chips in water. It’s the same thing,” he said.
Langley said at one point, both the tires and monofill were on fire but all the tires have since been extinguished.
Langley didn’t have details about what type of cleanup would be required once the fire is extinguished and who will be responsible for the work. DEQ lawyers are still examining the situation, he said.
Cottonport Monofill was closed and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015. Avoyelles land records show the primary processing site of about 29.5 acres was sold to Avoyelles Parish government in June 2020 after a sheriff’s sale to settle $2,906 in unpaid taxes.
But Joey Frank, director of the parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said that under state law, land taken in a tax sale isn’t fully adjudicated and possessed by the buyer until five years
afterward.
He said the parish’s legal advisor has determined that the Police Jury is not responsible for any cleanup that might be required, adding he isn’t sure how the parish government could even afford it if it were.
“You’re talking about millions of dollars for that to be fully cleaned up,” Frank said.
DEQ inspection records from February 2021 assert that First Guaranty Bank “is now in possession of the facility and its assets” under a bankruptcy court order and had recently, at the time, renewed a solid waste permit for the complex. Bank officials have disputed that ownership claim, however.
Other land also held by Cottonport Monofill went to private landowners in the same sheriff’s sale. At least one of those parcels, which is adjacent to the primary processing site, appears to have had tires on it also, according to a parish assessor’s office aerial map.
Langley said those tires hadn’t caught fire in the blaze.
