Storm damage debris recovery – time for a new paradigm?

November 29, 2012

Submitted by Don Marshall, PhD

We here in Bedford were fortunate in the limited amount of damage we sustained from Sandy though I understand that some of us were still without power, even  several days after the storm receded.

We cannot but be overwhelmed by the pictures of the damage that was sustained by our neighbors to the south, and especially on parts of New Jersey and Staten Island. Many are simply one large debris field without recognizable structures still remaining.

Staten Island is a particularly sobering situation since its Fresh Kills Landfill is already the repository for much of the debris from the Twin Towers disaster and now it will become the repository for its own disaster.

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Typically in such situations we see pictures of cranes and bull dozers and front end loaders and endless processions of dump trucks carting everything away for burial or some related form of disposal.

I wonder if this is not the time for a reassessment of this approach and   a new paradigm for storm debris recovery.

We all know that there is still an employment problem and most of us agree that there are serious strains on all our natural resources and energy consumption. Most of us are in favor of reduce, reuse, and recycling. What if we could devise an approach that would attempt to salvage as much as possible – bricks, lumber, piping, and all the other elements of construction – before the remainder is committed to the landfill process. And what if we could devise new architectural designs, construction methods, and building permitting processes that would allow us to make use of this recovered material.

Much of the recovery would be labor intensive. This would provide large scale employment, albeit not glamorous but worthwhile and satisfying in the end result. It would reduce the strain on our natural resources which otherwise will be put under even more and immediate strain to replace the damaged material. It would reduce the strain on the landfills themselves.

And who knows, with the right approach it might even turn out to be cost effective.

But someone, some organizations, some politicians, some construction designers, need to step forward to support the general concept and demand that it be given fair and proper consideration before the bulldozers move in.

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