The state collects $1 per tire as environmental fee when you buy new tires. This goes into a fund to clean up illegal tire dump sites. When I found the dump site which appears to be 20+ years old, I contacted the state illegal dump site office within the Alabama Dept of Environmental Management as was suggested by several people and reported it. The man I talked to said if it met the qualification of 100 tires or more they would have it cleaned up. Fast forward 11 months later I revived a registered letter from them saying they "found" an illegal dump site on my property. You have to be standing on the county road while all the leaves are off the trees to see them down in the gully. They wanted to know how they got there and if I was responsible for putting them there. I responded to the letter telling them that I was not responsible for them being there and that I had reported it 11 months earlier hoping to get some help in the clean up. I had to fill out a form on how long I owned the property among other questions. Today I received a second registered letter stating that I didn't meet the requirement of an innocent land owner and I have 30 days to submit a plan to clean it up. They also included laws about it being illegal to burn tires and basically saying I had to track the tires to the grave and show proof that they were legally disposed of. The state of Alabama will never hear me reporting anything again, no matter what it is. I am as innocent as can be in this situation and even reported it myself, but it seems I might have bought a valuable lesson.

"30 days to submit clean up plan"
Send them a registered letter saying that your plan is to let them clean it up with funds they collect from tire distributors.

I dealt with ADEM for a living for a long time, you don’t need an attorney you just need to submit a cleanup plan for an illegal dump that you didn’t create. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just explain that you’re the victim of the illegal activity of others and that you plan to seek assistance from county and state resources to have the site cleaned up using the state mandated scrap tire fees collected on every new tire sold in the state and then what you plan to do to limit the possibility of it happening again. Then petition ADEM and County commission for assistance in cleanup

This^^^. You need to request innocent landowner status. Explain that the tires were put there before you purchased the property.

It’s called Jewish lightning out here in the farm community