Scott McManus knows that construction of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm is a huge job. Developers PPM Energy and Zilkha Renewable Energy began building 120 windmills in April 2005 in New York state’s Lewis County. Once completed, the farm will more than quadruple the amount of wind power available to homeowners and business owners across the state.
McManus’s company, Mayfield, NY-based Delaney Construction, is responsible for a relatively small portion of the project: The firm’s contract calls for its workers to build and maintain the roads that truckers will use to carry equipment and parts onto vacant land on Tug Hill, the site of the wind project. But even though Delaney’s contract covers just $30 million of Maple Ridge’s more than $400 million construction budget, McManus understands that he and his fellow workers face a big challenge. It’s their job to make sure fugitive dust from the construction site doesn’t blow onto the private residences that surround Tug Hill.
This is not an easy task. Strong winds roar off the Great Lakes and sweep directly over the plateau on which Tug Hill sits. These winds are more than strong enough to toss any untreated particles of dirt into the air.
“Dust control on a project like this is so important,” says McManus, environmental superintendent on the project. “Basically, the project sits on all private land. Then there’s the magnitude of the job. It is going to be the biggest wind farm east of the Mississippi. A lot of people are looking at it. It’s in the spotlight, so the owner is big on dust control. It’s safety from our point of view too. If you have dusty roads and you’re running material on it, it’s like driving in a fog. So dust control is very important.”
McManus is far from the only engineer across the country battling airborne or fugitive dust. Countless contractors, highway department officials, strip-mining operators, and homebuilders face the same issue. Fugitive dust is a problem, and one that neighboring property owners, state officials, and federal regulators are looking at more closely than ever.
There’s little wonder why. Dust from highway projects can temporarily blind motorists. Dirt particles on building sites can clog the insides of construction equipment, wearing out these machines and forcing expensive repair jobs on their owners. Exposure to large amounts of airborne dust can aggravate respiratory illnesses. With all these potential problems, developers, engineers, and state officials can hardly be surprised that municipalities, federal agencies, and other regulatory bodies are putting more pressure on them to limit the amount of airborne dust generated on their construction sites.
There is good news, though. A growing industry devoted to stopping fugitive dust is rapidly maturing. As the demand for their products grows, these companies are spending more resources to fine-tune existing dust suppressants and develop new products.
This should come as a relief to anyone dealing with dust problems. Fugitive dust, after all, doesn’t just cause problems for homeowners and businesses surrounding construction sites; it may also eat into a contractor’s profits.
“Not only is the dust affecting the environment, the EPA regulations regarding dust control are getting tougher,” says Naresh Kandri, market analyst with Suffolk, VA-based Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp., a company that manufactures Alcotac, an organic binding product that limits fugitive dust. “We sell our product to mining operations. This dust can carry over into the plant and create safety hazards. It can damage the mining equipment they use, can get into the machine bearings. This creates a lot of expensive maintenance and downtime. If you don’t control dust properly, you may lose 5% of your valuable material when you are carrying it through the mine.”
Each year brings changes to the dust control industry, and 2005 was no different. Companies specializing in the field not only are providing long-tested products such as liquid and dry forms of magnesium and calcium chloride in the fight against dust but also are experimenting with new, more powerful products.
Controlling Profits, Not Just DustTougher regulations and demands by neighboring businesses and residences are just two of the reasons why the dust control business is booming. Another, and possibly more important, one? Profits.
Jim Zinkan, owner of Twinsburg, OH-based Zinkan Enterprises, which manufactures its own line of dust control chemical products, marvels at those contractors who resist paying for products that fight fugitive dust. By skimping on dust control, these contractors often end up paying more in the long run, Zinkan says.
Zinkan points to those builders, developers, and contractors who spend countless hours driving spraying trucks around their construction sites to keep their roads and foundations wet. This isn’t an effective strategy; the more often crews water a surface, the more dust they generate. Besides that, though, Zinkan is amazed that contractors would waste so much time, water, and man-hours instead of simply paying a little extra money up front to purchase high-quality dust control products.
“The inspectors on these projects are slowly getting more cognizant of the fact that they should be doing something else to control dust,” Zinkan notes. “Watering is the worst thing you can have, unless they want to always have a muddy, tacky surface. In essence, using the dust control products ends up saving them money. This is something that our industry has to do a better job of promoting-the savings that our products provide.”
Driving the message home that controlling dust actually saves money-in labor, application time, and damaged equipment-may prove to be the key to providing an even greater boost to the dust-suppression industry. The problem? Proving this to some contractors and developers isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks.
Just ask Jim Brownridge of Bakersfield, CA-based Tricor Refining, another manufacturer of dust control products. “We deal with different minds in this business,” Brownridge comments. “Some look for the cheapest way out. The hardest thing is selling to an agency, a contractor working on a construction site, or anyone else for whom using our product would be quite cost-effective compared to using water.”
The savings can add up quickly. Contractors who use Coherex, a petroleum resin product Tricor sells that binds small dust particles together to form harder-to-disperse larger particles, may have to apply the product only once during a job. If those same contractors were using water, they would have to run a water truck every couple of days.
“When you cut the frequency of application, you cut down on the deprecation of the truck and the cost of fuel, and you don’t have to pay the guy who is running the tanker as much,” Brownridge says. “Some of these large mines that are running the huge water tankers-these are big tankers that hold 10,000, 12,000 gallons-if they can cut a few of those applications out, they are saving several-hundred dollars. And saving money is what’s on the minds of these guys.”
A Project Everyone’s Watching
McManus, from Delaney Construction, doesn’t need to be sold on the importance of dust control. He already knows that his firm must do everything possible to keep fugitive dust from blowing off the future site of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm.
Skimping on the cost of dust control? McManus never even considered it. “It’s not just on this project. We always worry about dust,” he says. “No one wants dust on cars and houses. Even workers are more conscientious about it. We have a winter training program, and last year one of the topics was dust on construction jobs. It really is not only from an erosion standpoint, but from a safety and health standpoint too, a big issue. We like to handle it as a serious issue.”
Controlling dust here will be on McManus’s priority list until early 2006, when Delaney’s work on the project is scheduled to end. Maple Ridge, once it is completed, will provide enough wind energy to power 60,000 houses. Delaney crews are now building roads into vacant land, acres covered by woods and fields, so that trucks can safely transport the pieces of the windmills and the equipment needed to build them to the proper locations.
Delaney workers will also dig the foundations for these windmills. Later, they will take out some of the roads they’ve created, restoring the topsoil and turning the roads back into vacant fields.
The potential for fugitive dust escaping from such work is high. That’s why McManus and his crews have turned to Z-110, a lignite sulfinate product manufactured by Zinkan Enterprises that bonds dust particles together.
Delaney crews use their water truck to spray Z-110 over both newly created and existing dirt roads in this rural area, doing so after workers grade these roads. So far, Delaney has used one load of Z-110 for every half-mile of road. The application, McManus says, holds up for about six to eight weeks. “The product has been great for us. It’s held up really well. We haven’t had any problems with dust on this site.”
Keeping Dust Away From Homes
Bob Ginther, gas technician and the man in charge of dust control for the Onyx Oakridge Landfill outside Ballwin, MO, can never afford to ignore the dust problem. The residents living near the landfill certainly never will.
The landfill is unusual in that homes surround it. This means that local and state officials always keep a close watch on the site. One of the things they’re looking for? Fugitive dust. They don’t want any of it rising from the roads leading to the landfill to waft into the backyards of the site’s neighbors.
“People are always looking at us,” Ginther says. “We can’t afford to let any dust get off our site.”
Ginther’s biggest challenge comes when trucks head to the landfill to dump off their garbage. Depending on weather conditions, the trucks track mud along the roads leading to the dumping area. When that mud dries, it turns into dust.
Ginther relies on Coherex, the binding resin manufactured by Tricor Refining. Ginther’s crews use a water truck every three to four weeks to spray a mixture of four parts water and one part Coherex on the three-quarter-mile’s worth of roads leading to the site. If it rains more frequently, meaning more trucks leaving more mud on the road, crews may spray more often. “We keep Coherex on our site in large bulk,” Ginther says. “It’s worked wonderfully for us.”
Landfills are not the only application, of course. Tricor’s Brownridge says his clients have used the product to keep dust from escaping baseball fields, campgrounds, walking paths, parks-anywhere people and dust are present.
Coherex is an example of the improvements manufacturers have made in the dust control industry. Clients can continuously apply the product to a site, gradually building a resin residual on roads, paths, or other surfaces. Over time, clients can then dilute the product in ever greater amounts with water, saving money and still effectively solving their fugitive dust problems.
“We tend to work a lot with agencies that can control their own environment,” Brownridge says. “The key to our material is that it allows our clients to create their own applications, their own formulas. Not everyone has to use it the same way. This provides great flexibility.”
Immediate Rewards
Justin Vermillion, vice president of Palm Desert, CA-based Environmental Products and Applications, estimates that it costs companies about $60 an hour to run and man an average water truck. That cost adds up, especially on projects in dry, arid conditions, sites where fugitive dust is likely to be a major concern. This, Vermillion says, explains why contractors are more willing to spend money on dust control products.
“There is an immediate payback when you factor in the cost of watering,” Vermillion notes. “Water trucks are quite expensive. You run our products over an area one time, and you significantly reduce the amount of area that you have to treat with water. You are saving some serious dollars.”
Vermillion’s company produces Envirotac II, an acrylic product that bonds soil particles together. Clients use Envirotac II to contain fugitive dust on a range of sites including on helicopter pads and landing runways. Crews apply the product, usually with a spray truck, after they have completed grading an area, and then don’t have to think about dust control again, generally, for about 12 months, depending on the project and the strength of application.How effective has Envirotac II been? Effective enough so that the US military uses it to protect the men and women fighting overseas. The military uses Envirotac II to help keep US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan safe from brownouts, those swirling and dangerous storms of sand kicked up by planes and helicopters landing in desert lands. Too much dust can blind aircraft operators, leading to potentially fatal accidents. Military officials credit many helicopter and other aircraft crashes to this specific problem.
The most famous example of the military using Envirotac II is currently taking place in Afghanistan. Officials and soldiers at Camp Rhino in the deserts in this country routinely use the product to control dust on their landing sites. The soldiers there, though, don’t call the product by its proper name. They refer to it by the far less glamorous moniker of Rhino Snot. Don’t think Vermillion dislikes this, though. Environmental Products and Applications quickly copyrighted the nickname.
Environmental Products’ relationship with the military started shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At the request of military officials, workers with Environmental Products filled two 5,500-gallon bulk trucks with Envirotac II in late 2001, and drove them to an Air Force base in Riverside, CA. Product testing turned out to be successful, and it’s now keeping runways in the dustiest regions of Afghanistan safe for aircraft landings.
If dust control products are accepted by the military, it would stand to reason that contractors dealing not with life-and-death matters but with profits and efficiency would do the same.
The good news? Many contractors, spurred on perhaps by the threat of fines or the desire to save money, are turning more frequently to dust control suppressants to keep their work sites calm.
Tony Witte, vice president and general manager with Corrective Asphalt Materials in South Roxana, IL, sees this. He distributes dust suppressant products manufactured by other companies to contractors throughout much of the greater St. Louis area. At the same time, his company is often hired as a subcontractor to tackle dust control projects for builders or developers. So he is well aware of just how important controlling fugitive dust is becoming for everyone from builders and developers to government officials.
“People around here are using dust control products more than they have in the past,” Witte says. “We have a lot of air-permit regulations in the St. Louis area where we work. There are reports made on any fugitive dust that may leave a site.”
Witte also uses Coherex on many of his contracts. For instance, every two to three weeks, Witte’s crews apply it to the roads leading in and out of the CSXI railyard in Fairmont City, IL. Controlling dust here is no easy task. The reason? Rock.“The area there is all rock,” Witte explains. “How often we apply the product depends on how much they disturb that rock. With rock, you have to understand, trucks break it down, the rock deteriorates, and then you have created more dust. You have to treat that newly created dust.”
Working the Ag Business
Tougher air-quality regulations haven’t inspired Bill Martin’s clients to ask for more dust control services; the people he’s worked with have long understood the importance of battling fugitive dust. Ignoring such dust, after all, can seriously damage the profits earned by Martin’s clients.
Martin is the owner of Basic Industries in Pixley, CA. He provides dust control services to agricultural clients in what he calls the “no-man’s land” between Fresno and Bakersfield. His clients travel to their crops down narrow dirt roads, and the trucks they use can kick up large clouds of dust.
This is bad news for farmers. This dust often ends up covering the last few rows of crops. Dirt stacks on the plants and then attracts harmful insects. Left untreated, these bugs can devour profits as quickly as they chew up crops.
“You can’t kill the darn things because of the big layer of dirt covering the plants they’re destroying,” Martin says. “That insect control is the big motivation for farmers. Most of them don’t mind having dust. They do mind that the dust and dirt encourages the population of bad insects. They can’t control those insects if they don’t do something to control the dust.”
Martin’s typical assignment calls for him and his crew members to spray Coherex, the only dust control product Basic Industries uses, along dirt field roads. The company also applies it to equipment yards and parking areas for trucks.
One of Martin’s clients maintains a 10-acre dirt lot used to park hundreds of trucks that haul away large loads of tomatoes. Once a year, Basic Industries uses a spray truck to apply about 2,000 gallons of diluted product-five parts water, one part chemical-to each acre of the lot. Each truckload of this mixture covers three-quarters of an acre in about 20 minutes.
Martin is also happy to have found a side benefit to the product: Because consistent use of Coherex builds a resin residual, the product can act as a sealant on dirt roads, preventing them from cracking or chinking during harsh winter months.
“Farmers sometimes tear up their roads in the winter when they’re doing heavy tilling,” Martin explains. “If the roads aren’t somehow protected, it can create problems later on. I didn’t think about this benefit at the time I first started using the product. But this is definitely another aspect of it.”
For his part, Martin is pleased that the manufacturers of dust control products have boosted the effectiveness of their products. He uses Coherex, in fact, to control dust at his own equipment yard.
“Before, I’d run a sprinkler all the time in the summer just to keep the dust down,” he notes. “Then whenever it rained, the yard would get so soggy I’d have to keep traffic out of my yard. With this stuff, we put on a year’s application the first year we had it and our dust problem was over. That was fine with me. The next winter was a fairly wet one, but our yard didn’t get messed up. The water rolled right off it. That was almost as important to me as the dust control was.”
