With thousands of tonnes of demolition waste sitting in a storage compound, city hall wants to crush that material and sell some of it for profit while using the rest for infrastructure projects.
There are an estimated 18,000 cubic metres (9,200 tonnes) of concrete and 8,000 cubic metres (3,600 tonnes) of asphalt housed at a nearly full storage compound on High Street West, an engineering report to city council explained. This happened after the municipality started diverting construction and demolition waste from the landfill in 2016, beginning with the demolition of Union Hospital.
City council agreed with the idea, and during one of its 2020 budget meetings, voted unanimously to proceed with a tender to crush the diverted asphalt and concrete stockpiles for about $179,200, with the funding to come from inventory cash flow accounts.
The municipality will also sell to private industry all but two years’ worth of the excess materials with profits to offset capital requirements in the water utility.
Project background
This is an initiative that will have a positive environmental effect since it will divert material from the landfill through the recycling of non-renewable aggregate resources, said Darrin Stephanson, manager of utilities. The entire volume of excess materials represents four months of diversion of landfill waste during the last 3.5 years, or 10 per cent of the total waste stream. This project will also expand the landfill’s lifespan.
There is financial value to asphalt and concrete materials if processed through a crushing operation to turn them into usable aggregate, he continued. The asphalt can be crushed into three-quarter-inch aggregate useful for back lanes and gravel roads, while the concrete can be crushed into seven-eighths aggregate and used in excavations such as water main breaks or service leaks.
The cost to crush this material has been pegged at $179,200, the report says. Based on open market value, the potential worth of the materials recovered is $540,000. The engineering department believes the possible maximum profit of the sold material could be $308,800, after crushing costs are considered.
“Once the material is processed, the city can begin to measure and quantify annual diversion and incorporate these practices into normal business activities,” Stephanson said, adding an interim report about the project could be presented in May.
Council discussion
“I am really happy to see this report come forward. I can remember when this initiative first came to council,” said Coun. Heather Eby. “It’s great that we are doing it and I am excited that we will see the fruits of the labour of that. It’s also great that we can clean up that spot.”
Coun. Brian Swanson was concerned that the municipality might have waived dumping fees at the landfill when the former Union Hospital was being demolished, since that structure was a provincially-owned building and the province should have — if it didn’t — paid to dispose of the materials.
City administration was unable to provide an answer to Swanson’s concern.
The engineering department did consider that some of the demolition materials have been contaminated with rebar and metals, Stephanson said. The municipality could retain the material for scrap, but a request for proposals would determine that; the price in the crushing costs factors in the additional contamination.
The department has also determined it’s not possible to dump the crushed material at the landfill since there is no mechanism to receive it, while the storage yard is far from the landfill, he added. Most municipalities charge a small amount for handling fees anyway.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Jan. 13, 2020.
