by Steve, b61 Productions

Last month I received this email from my parents:

"Check out Wisconsin news. . . The old tire recycling plant is on fire. . . It looked just like the pictures from Iraq with an oil line fire. . . The drought is a concern. Another concern is ground water contamination. . . So far we are fine and have some real excitement."

The story made international news the first day. But the 400,000 tires–piled 35 feet high–burned for six days. If not for a space-age cooling agent shipped in from Georgia it would have likely burned for another week at least. More than 100 fire departments responded with 14 million gallons of water before the fire was extinguished.

Watertown Tire Recycling LLC had been reduced to a thick, black plume of smoke that choked a town of 20,000. For years neighbors had complained that the pile of tires was not only a blight on the rural area, but also a tinder box. The State Department of Natural Resources had been unsuccessful in persuading the owner, Thomas Springer, to comply with his permit for only 200,000 tires.

There are tremendous amounts of used tires that need to be recycled. And the State feared steep fines would bankrupt an especially prodigious gatherer of used tires–Springer continued to collect tires even while the fire raged.

Many of the pre-fire complaints were submitted to the Watertown Daily Times’ "Voice of the People." The aftermath was also discussed there. Predictably, most letters took the form of "We told you so." To which the following is an unedited response:

To the Editor, Daily Times:

First of all I would wish all the criticism would stop. My fianc