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Trails End creates new beginning for region’s recycling efforts
by Patrick Drake
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Recovery of waste materials will allow area to meet new state regulations
Warrenton – The old, 1200-foot-long warehouse that sat on Pier 3 at the Port of
Astoria was built in 1921. But when it was dismantled in 2002, the building’s lower
timbers didn’t look like old garbage to Dean Larson, owner of the excavating company
in charge of the job.
Even with the algae and barnacles built up on the wood, it seemed worth saving.
“You pull it out of the pier, and it looks like junk,” Larson said. “But you clean
it up a little bit and expose the value, and it’s just amazing.”
He’s now selling the same Douglas fir beams, sandblasted clean, for $400 to $500
apiece. Customers crave the wood’s water-worn, rustic look for decorative purposes.
The beams are just one type of construction debris Larson is recycling at his new
material recovery facility, Trails End Recovery, at Fort Clatsop Junction near
Warrenton. Larson says he can recycle or recover 99 percent of the commercial
construction waste delivered to the center, including asphalt, concrete, wood, tree
stumps, scrap metal, dirt, rock and sheet rock.
A new direction in recycling, Larson’s facility diverts construction waste from
landfill and helps Clatsop County achieve its state-mandated waste reduction goals.
And it can provide cheaper waste-disposal and raw materials for contractors than
traditional services and suppliers, Larson said.
Some officials are pleased the facility has come along.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us to increase
our recycling efforts and reuse materials that would otherwise be added to our waste
stream,” said Debra Kraske, Clatsop County’s assistant administrator. “It’s a great
idea, and I’m glad he took it on.”
Although environmentalists have been promoting recycling
efforts for decades, historically most commercial construction waste was either burned
in the open air at construction sites or sent to landfills, said Leslie Kochen, a natural
resource specialist at the state Department of Environmental Quality.
But a 1999 DEQ air-quality regulation restricting burning
has reduced disposal options and made recycling more attractive.
Larson has been salvaging the prime remnants of buildings
since the mid-1990s as part of his demolition and excavation work. He still has the doorway
from the old Lewis and Clark Elementary School. And his company milled old pilings from the
port’s West Mooring Basin to make siding for the new home of Astoria Builder Supply.
But it was only last April that his facility received the DEQ
permit allowing it to accept and process material from the public. At the facility, and its
sister site in Lewis & Clark, timbers are milled, concrete is crushed into a base for road
building, wood is ground down to hogged fuel and yard waste is composted into soil with
sheetrock added for lime.
“We’re all about trying to bring value to the material,” said Larson.
The facility is poised to become a big player in area recycling efforts.
DEQ requires the county to recycle at least 25 percent of the waste collected within it’s borders, and
even stricter standards are being considered by the state Legislature.
There is a lot of trash out there, Waste disposal in the county totaled
33,745 tons in 2002, or almost 1 tone per person, according to county recycling reports. More than
11,000 tons of that waste - about one-third- was eventually recovered Most of the recovery was done
through traditional recycling of household and yard waste by the area’s major trash hauler, Western
Oregon Waste.
Trails End doesn’t accept household waste, but it did accept over 2,600
tons of material in 2003, a sizable contribution that manager hope will grow. The more waste that can
be diverted from existing landfills the better, because new landfills are difficult to move through
local zoning processes, according to Tim Spencer, an environmental engineer at DEQ.
Larson will need more customers to both drop off raw debris and purchase
processed material if the business is to be viable economically, he said. “We’re looking for support
from everybody,” he said.
Although it has yet to turn a profit, he believes it has plenty of
potential. According to Larson, customers can dispose of debris for less at his facility than they
would pay at a landfill, and his alternative construction and landscaping products are also cheaper
or competitively priced.
And he is trying to get municipal contracts. The company made a proposal
to the city of Warrenton Wednesday to accept city residents’ yard waste. (Western Oregon Waste now has
the city’s contract for yard waste recycling through its Astoria transfer station.)
Under the proposal, residents could drop off their waste at Larson’s closer
facility, and the costs would be applied to their regular sanitation bills. No decision was made
Wednesday night.
“We’re very excited about the proposal.” said Warrenton interim city manager
Jim Hough. “We hope that we’ll encourage more people to recycle.”
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The proceeding story appeared in the Friday, March 5th, 2004 edition of The Daily Astorian of Astoria, OR. Reprinted with permission.
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