High tide: hurricane cleanup tasks help a North Carolina landfill operator get ahead of the curve on C&D recycling.

When someone says, "Look what the wind blew in," to Judson Whitehurst, he pays a little more attention than most people would.

Whitehurst is the owner and operator of EJE Recycling and Disposal in Greenville, N.C., not far from the Atlantic coast. EJE started as a small recycling yard, he says, but everything changed when Hurricane Floyd blew into Greenville with Category 4 winds in September of 1999.

"That was the flood of the century for people in these parts," Whitehurst remarks. "When the cleanup started, authorities made us a staging site for this county. Once all the material was here, they asked if we could landfill it here instead of transporting it to another site."

A CHANGE OF PLANS

Soon after the hurricane, neighboring counties also started coming to EJE to dispose of their storm debris, according to Whitehurst. The landfill business quickly became a major part of the EJE operation.

"Now we do complete disposal as a landfill, transfer station and recycling center. We do mainly construction and demolition waste and we specialize in recycling steel and paper grades," he says.

Whitehurst soon realized that maximizing the life of his landfill had to be a priority for long-term success, so he went to work to "get ahead of the curve." His plan to divert as much material as possible to other streams and to make the best use of his landfill capacity led him to the prospect of acquiring a new primary shredder.

"Landfills are hard to get permitted now, and it's just going to get harder," Whitehurst states. "I started looking at shredders to divert more material into recycling and reduce the volume of any remaining material. Public perception is also key; it's important for the public to see you making the effort to add life to the landfill."

SHOPPING LIST

Over the past year or so, Whitehurst claims he has operated demonstration units of "every shredder that's out there." But many of them, he says, could "only produce maybe a third of what they projected."

Whitehurst looked a machines rated from 50 to 100 tons per hour, but generally found that the projections only applied to a limited range of materials. For the kind of mixed materials that EJE processes which he describes as "anything the wind might blow in "--many machines slowed down to 20 or 30 tons per hour, while others were simply unable to process the material. Among the most challenging materials for some of the machines Whitehurst looked at were mattresses, roofing, carper, hydro poles and cables.

While conducting his search, Whitehurst discovered the Web site for the Pri-Max line of multi-material primary shredders from SSI Shredding Systems Inc., Wilsonville, Ore. SSI, he says, has brought a different approach to his problem.

"Most of the others I talked to would simply quote a shredder on the size of machine I asked for or on the price I had in mind," he remarks. "SSI really helped us up the learning curve."

As a result, the shredder that EJE now operates is not the one that Whitehurst first came in contact with as a demonstration model from SSI. "I thought I needed a smaller machine, a single-shaft model. They told me up-front they didn't believe it would do the job but they went along with me on the demo. Well, the throughput rate was right, but bulky materials were still a problem," he now acknowledges.

DOUBLE-SHAFT STRENGTH

SSI's product engineers say the double-shaft design of its Pri-Max PR-4000 shredder is better suited to the mix of materials Whitehurst must process. The twin shafts are "more aggressive" on the materials than a single-shaft machine, according to the company's applications specialists. As a result, the self-feeding action is more effective.

While Whitehurst was still in the shopping stage, SSI was able to arrange a trip for him to see a PR-4000 on the job at a large municipal site in New York, up the coast from Greenville.

Like EJE, the New York site was processing bulky materials ranging from mattresses and couches to large tree stumps. Based on what he saw, Whitehurst took delivery of the PR-4000 for his operation.

"I haven't looked back," he now says of his decision to buy the larger, double-shaft model. "I get, on average, 50 to 55 tons of C&D material processed per hour, just as SSI projected.

"I was very impressed with those people; they know their business. They didn't do a projection for wood materials, logs and stumps, but there it runs 35 to 38 tons per, hour. They really opened my eyes, Whithurst says.

The shredder EJE operates is also equipped with a mobile package, so now Whitehurst intends to perform more custom work at remote customer sites. He recently completed a large contract for the state Department of Transportation and believes more work from the department is likely soon. The mobility of the shredder, he says, gives him more options for setting up in the EJE yard, too.

"This is a good machine for asbestos material, too," he notes. "A high-speed grinder produces a lot of dust but, with the low-speed operation of the shredder, there is no airborne debris."

Whitehurst is continuing to work with SSI to customize his PR-4000 for even higher productivity. Meanwhile, he is an active participant in the emergency planning programs for several counties in his area.

The next time a big wind blows into Greenville, Judson Whirehurst is going to be ready!

RELATED ARTICLE: Storming ashore.

The 2004 hurricane season has brought early storm damage to parts of the eastern U.S., with Florida particularly hard hit.

Hurricane Charley crossed portions of the Sunshine State, moving in a diagonal line from southwest to northeast, in August. Chadey went on to cause additional havoc along parts of the Carolina coast as well.

The storm, with winds as strong as 145 mph, came ashore near Punta Gorda, Fla., on the Gulf Coast and left residents homeless across several stretches of central Florida.

Charley has provided the a massive amount of clean-up material consisting of downed trees, tree limbs and unplanned demolition scrap.

Less than a week after the storm moved through, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that municipal work crews and private contractors were "out in force . loading trucks of the jungle-like mess and taking it to collection points to be ground up and taken to landfills."

The newspaper contacted officials in several communities near Daytona Beach's home county, Volusia County, with one official estimating that 600,000 cubic yards of debris would need to be processed there.

Early estimates by insurance companies calculated $11 billion in damage to insured structures statewide. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has sent teams to Florida to help local officials and residents organize cleanup efforts and National Guard units also responded quickly.

Initial clean-up efforts focused on any areas where a rescue possibility might exist, followed by the priority of clearing roads and streets of debris.

The author is the sales and marketing director of SSI Shredding Systems Inc. She can be contacted at [e-mail].