City gives old roads new life
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, July 16, 2006
PORTLAND, Ore. – Massive chunks of concrete lie on a slab near piles of oily black asphalt grindings at Sunderland Yard in northeast Portland. The rocks could be sections of North Killingsworth Street or pieces of a retaining wall near Northeast 148th and Marine Drive.
Regardless of their origins, the materials all look the same in the end. Here, the remains of the city’s roads lie crumpled and neatly stacked.
“This is where roads come to rest,” said Matt Todd, acting public works supervisor at Sunderland Yard on Northeast 33rd Drive.
The 20-acre concrete graveyard, owned and operated by the city of Portland’s Bureau of Maintenance, is the end of the road for more than 250,000 cubic yards of materials salvaged from city street projects each year.
The used rock, from diverse projects such as sidewalk repairs and the resurfacing of major thoroughfares, all ends up at Sunderland to die and be recycled, either reborn as material for future city maintenance projects or sold to the general public.
Independent contractors also can bring in their recovered materials for a $1 per ton tipping fee.
The city doesn’t require concrete and asphalt recycling, but it makes good economic sense to do it, said Roy Brower, regulatory affairs division manager with the regional government known as Metro.
The Sunderland recycling facility has become increasingly important in offsetting the rising costs of fuel and oil. The Bureau of Maintenance, housed under Portland’s Office of Transportation, expects to pay an additional $450,000 this year because of rising fuel costs.
The price of asphalt, which increased $2 a ton this spring, also has strained the city’s budget.
“The price of asphalt is going way up ‘cause it’s all oil-based,” Todd said. “We take our grindings (to asphalt plants) and they give us a discount on asphalt, so that’s a good deal right now.”
In its nearly 30-year history, Sunderland Yard has salvaged millions of dollars for the city’s crumbling maintenance program. Money that would have been spent on hauling and tipping fees to dump the used rock in landfills outside the city limits is now used to tackle the city’s tremendous maintenance backlog.
The city expects net savings of more than $12 million from the facility’s operations in fiscal year 2005-06.
“Our funding is cost avoidance,” said Jill Jacobsen, facility manager with the city of Portland. “We don’t have to pay to send the materials to the landfill.”
After being sorted, crushed and ground at the facility, the concrete chunks are reborn as quarter-sized pieces of rock and reincorporated into city streets as bedrock.
Approximately 10 percent to 20 percent of the city’s road repairs use recycled rock from the facility.
“When we need rock, we go out to Sunderland and pick it up,” said Thomas Aubuchon, a crew leader with the Bureau of Maintenance. “Then we reinstall it as base rock into the cut.”
