Lake clean-up coincides with tire disposal

Jim Coady of McCook hoists a tire drug from a bay at Hugh Butler Lake onto a truck for delivery to a used tire collection in Curtis. Coady is complying with a directive from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission to remove tires and debris from the bay and clean the shoreline and docks at the mobile home park at the lake. Neither Coady nor a bureau spokesman are sure if the shoreline will have to be stabilized with some other material. Some tires are tucked under docks and stacked on drill stem.

HUGH BUTLER LAKE -- Jim Coady's thankful that Frontier County was having a used tire collection when he needed to remove tires from a bay at Hugh Butler Lake north of McCook.

Coady made five trips from the lake to Curtis, hauling 348 tires of every size and condition drug from the banks of the bay marked on the west by a working lighthouse and on the northeast by summer escape mobile homes.

Jim, his wife, Jean, and his sister and her husband, Sue and Sid Doak, have a concession agreement with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission for the concession area and the mobile home park, and are responsible for their maintenance.

Jay Leasure, a natural resource specialist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation office in Grand Island, said that the Coadys and Doaks have worked very hard and made improvements at the marina/mobile home park during the past 10 years. Removal of the tires and other debris on the shore lines in the bay has been another general clean-up effort prescribed by the Bureau, Leasure said, along with bringing septic, water and electrical systems up to recognized state regulations and codes.

"Our main concern," Leasure said, "is public safety."

Coady said he and Kirk Ulery of Oberlin and Scott Boehm, Jay Wood and Mike Roth of McCook have pulled most of the tires up the banks with a backhoe or boom truck and line. "Some were 150 feet out," Coady said. Some tires will have to stay where they are because they have trees growing in them, he said. Others may have to remain until the ground freezes and Jim can dig them out with the backhoe.

Some of the tires are cozied up next to or under a dock, and will have to stay until the dock is rebuilt. Some are stacked -- six and seven high -- on buried oilfield drill stem pipe.

Tires started appearing along the banks as early as the mid-1960's, Coady suspects, when the Job Corps was stationed at the old Army Air Base northwest of McCook and helped at the lake. "We've found old white-wall tires, wide and narrow white walls, racing tires," Coady said. " ... old Army tires with offset lugs. Red Streak tires ... they were originally on a '69 Dodge Dart. I haven't seen those in years ... So much history ... "

During the tire clean-up process, Jim has also trimmed trees and cleared brush and overgrowth. "We've got eight big brush piles to burn," Coady said, "and we're still trimming." Sid said they're noticing this year that many of the cottonwoods on the lake shores are being damaged by a borer of some sort and by web worms dangling from their branches. Sid said they're also concerned that thistles need to be sprayed not only in their bay but all along lake properties.

Jim said the Bureau wanted the tires out by at least the end of the year, but he and friends worked hard enough to finish the project by Aug. 22, when the tire collection ended in Curtis. Disposing of the tires at a landfill could have cost $5 to $20 each, depending on their size, Coady said.

"Thank goodness for Frontier County and the RC&D and the DEQ grant that paid for the tire pick-up," he said.