Americans watched with disbelief as storm after storm struck the Southeastern United States in the summer of 2005. Afterwards, clean-up crews, landfill operators and recyclers tried their best to clean up after the hurricanes.
Two government officials, one from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the other from the State of Mississippi, provided an update from the battered region to attendees of the C&D World Conference, which took place in Miami in mid-January.
Mark Williams, of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MEQ), showed slides of the intense damage that occurred along that state’s Gulf Coast, including buildings flattened or reduced to skeletons, vehicles swept away into wooded areas, and trailers from the Port of Gulfport—many of them full of commodities such as Dole bananas—swept inland well away from the loading docks and warehouses.
While recycling advocates may wish to see recycling become part of the clean-up scenario, Williams stated bluntly, “Mixed debris piles really pose a problem for any kind of reclamation.”
Fending off the health and environmental effects of rotting food and other decomposing materials or of engine oils and other fluids inside vehicles and machinery took top priority.
In Mississippi, where some 236 people died and some 65,000 homes were destroyed, an estimated 41 million cubic yards of storm debris was created by Hurricane Katrina.
Phase I clean-up involved addressing sewage and raw food concerns, while Phase II involved clearing rights-of-way and authorizing temporary debris collection sites, according to Williams.
In Phase III, some recycling began taking place as abandoned appliances and vehicles began to be processed within the scrap metals recycling stream. Some vegetation debris was also processed not only for disposal but also for possible recycling.
Phases IV and V, currently underway, involve further clean up and the eventual closing of the temporary collection sites.
Williams listed several obstacles to recycling in the post-Katrina environment, including the mixed nature of the debris, the presence of contamination (mold in particular), and the pressure to act quickly to clean up the damage.
But future recycling opportunities look brighter, particularly as landfills in the region have reached capacity, meaning that C&D recycling should grow in importance during reconstruction.
Marcella Denton of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent November and December in Mississippi, engaged in storm clean up and debris removal.
As of December, Denton noted that there was still debris on the ground in such hard hit towns as Pass Christian, Miss., and that many structures that remain are covered in blue tarp awaiting further repair.
The C&D World Exhibition & Conference took place Jan. 15-17 in Miami. It is the official show of the Construction Materials Recycling Association and is managed by GIE Media Inc., publisher of Construction & Demolition Recycling magazine.