Concrete and asphalt recycling will create more landfill space

The City of Swift Current will be recycling a large stockpile of asphalt and concrete into useable material for road maintenance and repair.

Councillors approved a two-year recycled aggregate crushing contract agreement during a regular council meeting, Jan. 14.

Two companies provided quotations for crushing the asphalt and concrete. The contract was awarded to the lowest bid of $660,00 (PST included, GST excluded) by Rockcrusher Concrete & Asphalt Recycling of Regina.

The asphalt and concrete accumulated at the City's East Landfill over the past 30 years. There is currently an asphalt stockpile of 20,000 tonnes and a concrete stockpile of 40,000 tonnes. Smaller piles of concrete along with mixed demolition materials and metals are also scattered over an area of approximately seven acres, which has been nicknamed the concrete field. It contains an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes of material.

All this material in the two stockpiles and in the concrete field came from various demolition projects in the city, including the former Swift Current Union Hospital that was closed in 2007, and more recently from the demolition of unused school buildings in the city.

Management practices at landfills have changed a lot over the past three decades. In the past it was not unusual to simply treat concrete as waste material.

“Recycling of concrete is relatively new,”City General Manager of Infrastructure and Operations Mitch Minken said after the meeting. “In the past it would have been done just exactly that way. It would have been just spread around and it would just become waste that would have been filled over. Now that the recycling technology is there to actually recycle the concrete, it actually becomes a bit of a valuable commodity.”

The recycling of the asphalt and concrete will have numerous practical and financial benefits for the City. A major advantage will be to have more landfill space available after the stockpiles and the concrete field have been cleared away.

“Landfills are about airspace,” he said. “When you bring some material into the landfill it costs money. So right now it's at $90 a tonne when you bring something into our landfill. By removing this concrete out of useable area, then we can use it for waste that will come in and we’ll generate that $90 a tonne revenue, which is where we get the cost savings.”

If the material in the concrete field is not recycled, there will be an estimated $400,000 loss in airspace material.

The recycled asphalt and concrete will be used to build and maintain streets in Swift Current. This will also be a cost saving for the City, because it will not need to purchase this road material elsewhere.

“We’re probably saving right around 50 per cent of the cost,” he said. “So it’s a substantial saving.”

The City Public Works department has a growing need for useable aggregate material. The crushed asphalt can be used in different ways.

“Where we’re seeing good uses for the asphalt aggregate are in laneways where we have some issues with rutting and stuff,” Minken said. “It's good use in yards, good use on other road beds.”

The crushed concrete will become subbase material to ensure the roads are repaired properly.

“That's a little bit more difficult use, because it's really the building block of a roadway,” he explained. “So the very bottom layer is where that would be used. Normally we’d be using some heavier gravel with a little bit more rock content as that subbase material, while this crushed concrete can take the place of that. ... So as we go forward and we need to build new roads and they’re needed then we’ll have that material for building those roads.”

Rezoning of land for proposed concrete crushing operation:

Council reviewed another proposal that will result in the crushing of concrete. Steve's Excavating Inc. wants to purchase about four acres of City-owned land at 459 18th Avenue SE to start a concrete crushing operation.

The land is located south of Kinetic Exhibition Park and is currently used as a concrete dumping ground.

At the moment. it is zoned as urban reserve district, which is a designation given to land until its future land use is determined.

It will therefore have to be rezoned to heavy industrial district to allow a crushing operation. Most of the surrounding land is already zoned for industrial use, but the area to the west is still designated as urban reserve district.

Councillors voted in favour of a recommendation to give notice of motion to the public that council is planning to amend the zoning bylaw to rezone this portion of land from urban reserve district to heavy industrial district.