Home » Recycled tire asphalt grant funding available to counties

Recycled tire asphalt grant funding available to counties

FRANKFORT, Ky. (April 26, 2017) — Grant funding will be made available to counties for projects that use recycled Kentucky waste tires in rubber-modified asphalt paving projects, Energy and Environment Cabinet Secretary Charles G. Snavely announced today.

The grant can be used to fund either chip seal or thin asphalt overlay pavement projects.

Counties may apply either for funding for up to 24,000 square yards of chip seal paving or up to 12,000 square yards of asphalt overlay paving. Counties may not apply for both options.

Successful applicants will be required to complete an equivalent project on a similar section of road using standard asphalt, at their own expense, in order to compare the performance of standard versus rubber-modified asphalt.

Rubber-modified asphalt involves amending standard asphalt with crumb rubber derived from recycled waste tires. Chip seal is a pavement surface treatment that combines one or more layers of liquid asphalt with one or more layers of fine aggregate, while an asphalt overlay consists of a thin layer of asphalt pavement applied over an existing asphalt surface. The thickness of an overlay for the purposes of this project should not exceed 1.5 inches.

Depending on the application, rubber-modified asphalt has numerous potential benefits including increased skid resistance, increased road life and noise reduction, in addition to providing a valuable end use for recycled waste tires. The objective of the grant is to determine if rubber-modified asphalt can provide superior performance to standard asphalt in certain applications.

Funding for this grant comes from the Kentucky Waste Tire Trust Fund, which receives $1 from every new tire sold in the Commonwealth. In addition to providing funding to promote the development of markets for recycled waste tires, the fund also supports waste tire collection events, tire pile clean-ups, and grants for counties to manage waste tires.

Grant applications must be submitted no later than June 5, 2017, and projects must be completed by December 31, 2017. Grant applications packets will be sent by email to county judge-executives and solid waste coordinators.