Group Cleaning up ‘Standing’ Tires in Arkansas River

TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — It started as a mystery, dozens of tires standing upright in the middle of the Arkansas river, just near I-44.

A man named Zayn lifted the tires out of the ground and into the view of people driving by in a way to draw attention to the pollution.

“He was walking on the river, saw all these tires and started pulling them up and then realized oh my gosh there’s tires everywhere and wanted to bring more attention to it,” said Ben Neal with Local Farm OK.

It worked – now Ben and his group are taking action to clean up the river.

“I drive this way to work everyday and I’ve been seeing these tires out here for the last two weeks and we were talking about it at work yesterday and I said it’s great they’ve been dug up but I’m tired of looking at them and people at work agreed, so we decided we’re going to meet here at 8:30 down under the bridge on Elwood and start cleaning these tires up,” said Neal.

For Ben this is about more than just a few tires in a river – it’s about how our city is viewed.

“It needs to be cleaned up, it’s pretty bad and again people coming to Tulsa the first thing they see is a hundred tires standing up in the middle of our river so it looks pretty bad on Tulsa,” said Neal.

Neal says from looking at the tires it seems like they’ve been there a while.

He says he’s trying to partner with Tulsa parks to get the tires disposed of properly.