C&D World 2016: Making progress

The past year has seen quite a bit of progress made on the regulatory and legislative front for those in the construction and demolition (C&D) recycling industry, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Non-Hazardous Secondary Materials (NHSM) Final Rule and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) Crystalline Silica Rule.

During the 2016 C&D World, the annual meeting of the Milwaukee-based Construction and Demolition Recycling Association (CDRA) held in San Jose, California, in early May, Gary Sondermeyer, vice president of operations for Bayshore Recycling, Keasbey, New Jersey, called the NHSM rule “the most significant [rule] in the history or our association.”

The rule was proposed in 2012 and the CDRA joined a consortium of trade associations and hired outside services to help get its message to regulators.

“Our industry and viability of our business was at stake,” said Sondermeyer. The rule could have prevented C&D wood from being used as fuel, one of the industry’s largest end markets for the material. He said the entire rulemaking team toured nearby Broadrun Recycling, a C&D recycling facility in Manassas, Virginia, in 2013, and it literally changed their minds.

He called it a jaw-dropping experience for regulators, one of whom said, “It really is fuel.”
“I firmly believe that this rule from the United State was changed from that visit to Broad Run Recycling,” he told attendees.

As for the silica rule, Sondermeyer said it had been an agency initiative for the last ten years, but the finalization of the rule earlier this year, “came out of left field.”

Again the CDRA joined a consortium to coordinate a response to the proposed rule which would have reduced the amount of respirable silica allowed at construction site from 250 micrograms per cubic meter to 50.

“OSHA received literally thousands of comments,” said Sondermeyer. Had the rule passed in its initial form, he says the typical concrete crushing operation would have been no more.

The CDRA joined 23 other trade associations to form the Construction Industry Safety Coalition (CISC).

“We participated in association commentary and meetings over a number of years of engagement and provided direct comments,” he said. The CISC met with OSHA.

“We got a chance to sit across table and talk about how it was going to put people out of business,” he said. “When you looked at those numbers, it demonstrated that this rule was absolutely over the top, and low and behold they changed the rule.”

He said ongoing concerns remained about the final rule including the use of water spraying systems for dust suppression and ventilated booths required over crushers. The spraying requirement, he said, is in line with vendor specifications, but the ventilated booths or the alternative of working remotely is not practical, he said.

Four members of the CISC have taken next step of legal action, he said. CDRA plans to join in legal action but is in the process of working on its position.

“Both rules,” he said, “potentially were very threatening. Overall we did very well.”

Sondermeyer also discussed the EPA’s position on sustainable materials management (SMM). It published a plan in October 2015 with many objectives including decreasing disposal rates. While the plan leaves much of the implementation up to the states, Sondermeyer says, it gives us a policy direction we can work with.

Jay Behnke, president, STATE Testing, East Dundee, Illinois, and director of Behnke Materials in Wisconsin, provided some comparison between each state’s department of transportation (DOT).

He said Wisconsin operates like most states where the DOT sets standard and everyone else follows. He said it can be good in a way because everyone follows the same rulebook, but if sustainability isn’t part of what DOT is doing, then it can be bad for the industry.

In Illinois, agencies like the Tollway and the city of Chicago want to be green to be sustainable, some to save money. He said, “It is unique in this country and has led to a remarkable success story of using a wide variety of recycled products.”

He said the Chicago DOT is a progressive agency and that the Illinois Tollway system’s program has led to the greenest reconstruction of a tollway in the entire U.S.

C&D World was held May 1-3 at the Doubletree by Hilton in San Jose, California.