The National Park Service has begun cleaning up a pile of hundreds of tires that were discovered dumped in Anacostia Park.
Crews worked in the rain Tuesday packing truck load after truck load with tires in an effort to move the mountain that was illegally dumped in the Southeast D.C. park.
Hundreds of tires were found in a wooded area right below Interstate 295 between the CSX railway and the Anacostia River in late December.
"This isn’t how our national parks should look. This isn’t how our national parks should be treated," U.S. Park Police Sgt. Thomas Twiname said.
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U.S. Park Police said they believe the tires were dumped into the park from the freeway above.
In December, News4 found tires in the trees and some still on the jersey wall along I-295.
Twiname said disposing of the used tires is a costly endeavor.
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"They’re going to load these tires up, they’re going to be brought to a recycling center and they’ll be recycled, and they’ll kind of continue that process until all these tires are gone," Twiname said.
Members of the environmental group Ward 8 Woods first discovered the tires.
Ward 8 Woods' Executive Director Nathan Harrington applauded the Park Service's response but said he's concerned that authorities still don't know who dumped the tires.
"That’s very worrisome. But I hope that they have seen these news reports, they've seen the outrage and the disgust people have with this and they’ll think twice about doing it again, and I hope this will also lend momentum in efforts to address illegal dumping in a systematic way with better enforcement and a better system for tracking where tires are coming from and where they're going," Harrington said.
Park Police said they're still investigating to find who dumped the tires.
The clean up effort will take several days.
