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Household waste facility takes
hazard out of over 5 million pieces
By Dave Harris, public affairs
specialist, Louisiana Recovery Field Office
You can’t take
your bottles, cans, newspapers or cardboard to them to recycle, but
the Army Corps of Engineers’ Hazardous Household Waste facility has
found ways to tame or reuse flammables and other dangerous items
left behind by displaced residents after Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita.
Flooded and
abandoned Louisiana houses following Katrina and Rita resulted in
millions of items of household hazardous and toxic wastes, to
include such categories as batteries, paints, aerosols, electronics,
flammables, compressed gases and ammunition.
The Household
Hazardous Waste facility in New Orleans’ Gentilly area was first
operated by the EPA to process such items. The Corps of Engineers
took over the facility in November 2006. Workers wearing
spacesuit-like protection gear have so far retrieved, sorted and
processed more than 5 million items, which include the following:
Cleaning
products - oven cleaners, drain cleaners, wood metal cleaners
and polishes, toilet cleaners, tub/tile/shower cleaners, laundry
bleach, pool chemicals.
Automotive
products - motor oil, fuel additives, injection cleaners, air
conditioning refrigerants, starter fluids, auto batteries,
transmission/brake fluids, antifreeze.
Lawn and
garden products - herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, wood
preservatives.
Flammable
products - propane tanks and other compressed gas cylinders,
kerosene, residential heating oil/diesel, gas, oil, lighter fluids.
Indoor
pesticides - ant/cockroach/flea/rodent sprays and baits.
Workshop/painting supplies - adhesives, glues, furniture
strippers, oil/enamel based paints, stains and finishes, paint
thinners and turpentine, paint removers, photographic and hobby
chemicals).
Specific recycle
usage per waste stream includes the following:
Energy
recovery: Paint Related Materials, Flammable Liquids/Solids
Other
recovery: mercury, all batteries, Freon, propane, acetylene and
Freon cylinders, scrap metals, PCB's (high chlorinate solvents), and
e-waste (electronics).
Reclaim/reuse:
antifreeze and oil.
Tim Gouger, who
oversees the facility operation, said crews recover many of the
items and combustibles for beneficial use.
“Flammable
materials become feedstock to fuel cement kilns throughout the
country,” he said.
Propane cylinders
with valves that meet current specifications are palletized and
trucked away by one of the larger consumer propane companies.
“They reuse both
the gas and the cylinders.” Gouger explained that the older
cylinders with obsolete valves undergo a process in which the gas is
burned off and the cylinders crushed and sold as scrap.
Oxygen and gas
cylinders are de-gassed, de-valved and crushed as well.
Certain items and
gasses are sent for offsite processing, Gouger said, such as Freon,
ammonia, chlorine and acetylene torches.
“More challenging
are cylinders when we’re not sure what’s in them. We send them
offsite and tell processors what we think it is,” he said.
“It’s a little
tricky.”
What about guns
and ammunition – anything salvageable?
No, he said.
“They’re rust buckets. The ammo has been under water and
compromised. We send it to popping furnaces where it is detonated.”
Information on the guns is reported to the property authorities and
the guns are smelted and the metals reused.
The facility does
a robust business in any substance that is not regulated and has
fuel potential – “anything with recombustible oils and gasses –
combustibles and flammables that meet the required flash points,”
Gouger said.
“The energy
recovery industry creates our greatest demand.”
Tim Gouger
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