Best Environmentally Correct Drought Relief

On the one hand, big nasty piles of illegally dumped tires, just waiting to spontaneously combust. On the other, thousands of pre-teen soccer players and their parents, banned from parched playing fields. Can one be used to remedy the other? Yes! And the state wants to help play matchmaker. The Poudre School District required artificial turf-maker Sprinturf to use rubber recycled from discarded tires as in-fill when a field at Rocky Mountain High School was resurfaced last summer; the Colorado Waste Tire Program covered about 10 percent of the cost, or $52,000, as thanks for removing thousands of used tires from the Colorado landscape, and the rest will pay for itself in seven years through reduced maintenance costs. The field never needs watering, and the high school has been flooded with requests to use it by other area teams whose parched fields have been placed off limts for spring practices.