By Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Hundreds of old tires near Lunken Airport should be removed within two weeks, Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken said.

Luken spoke out Wednesday, urging city health officials and staff at Lunken Airport to accelerate efforts to get rid of the tires. Citizens have complained for months that the tires - sitting near a popular walking and biking trail since August 2001 - pose a potential risk of spreading West Nile virus.

The complaints were renewed because earlier this week, state health officials confirmed that a dead blue jay found in Anderson Township had the West Nile virus, which killed 31 Ohio residents last summer.

Public health officials have repeatedly urged property owners to get rid of old tires because they are notorious breeding sites for mosquitoes, which can spread West Nile virus and other illnesses. Yet this tire problem involves public property.

"If this were private property, there would have been orders to clean up those tires. But this was handled differently because it was on (city-owned) Lunken Airport property. To me, that's completely unacceptable," Luken said.

Malcolm Adcock, Cincinnati health commissioner, said his department plans to have the tires removed within two weeks. They might have been removed already, but the job has been more complicated than expected, Adcock said.

Part of the delay involved working out who is responsible for the tires. More recently, city officials discovered that bolts binding many of the tires together must be removed before they can be accepted by tire shredding services.

The tires are there because they were used as safety barricades during the Lunken Runway Enduro sports car race, held at the airport in August 2001. They weren't intended to be stored permanently at the airport.

Normally, the city would order the race organizers to remove the tires then pursue legal action if the job didn't get done.

But the company that set up the race, Lunken Enduro Group, filed for bankruptcy in January 2002. An auction of company assets was held in spring 2002, according to the debtor's former attorney, Robert A. Goering. But the tires didn't sell, which meant they became the city's problem.

"There's nobody else to take care of it," Adcock said.

No cost estimate for removing the tires was available Wednesday. However, some money is available through a cleanup program managed by the Hamilton County Solid Waste Management District.

Arranging for someone to unbolt the tires - a still uncompleted task - has been the biggest recent complication, Adcock said.

In the meantime, the health department plans to take steps to prevent mosquito breeding among the tires, Adcock said. Exactly what steps have not been decided.

E-mail tbonfield@enquirer.com