CAPE MAY – Crushed bottles once filled with demon rum and ice cold beer will mix with purified sand to form a gritty subsurface for Route 52 causeway’s reconstruction that connects wet Somers Point to dry Ocean City.
If the mix, known in engineering parlance as I-7, proves a success in its new use, many mucked-in boaters, constrained by silt, may raise a glass of bubbly to toast a new use for dredge material.
There are such spoils aplenty in Cape May County drying in government-approved “CDFs” (certified disposal facilities).
There are 150,000 cubic yards reposing on Nummy Island at Site 103 in Middle Township from Stone Harbor’s back bays.
That site was originally to be used for this test, but permits did not materialize in time, according to Douglas Gaffney, project engineer, of Ocean and Coastal Consultants, Inc., of Gibbsboro.
Gaffney took a handful of the ground glass for inspection, and explained that it was more plentiful in this area than other “aggregates,” such as pebbles, which must be trucked here, thus adding to costs of road projects.
The county MUA has mountains of the glass, readily available at its Woodbine recycling center.
“We think we are pretty close to giving them all the glass they need,” said John Baron, MUA Solid Waste manager.
Like many others, Baron hopes the experiment proves successful, since it would give an added benefit to the tons of recycled glass processed at Woodbine.
A prior test use of ground glass at the MUA mixed it with asphalt for use as road surface. That product, dubbed “glassphalt,” has some drawbacks, since sharp pieces of glass sometimes protruded.
That cannot happen on this project, since the glass is ground finer, and will be under the top surface layer.
Additionally, there are 1 million cubic yards piped onto land that was to become the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center, when Cape May Inlet was created long ago.
Presently, there is a pilot project, funded by a $550,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation under the I Boat Program that will test the feasibility of using that sand mixed, 50-50 or 75-25, with crushed glass provided by the county MUA.
It will be trucked from the Coast Guard Training Center, close to Cape May Inlet where much of the sand originated, to the Route 52 causeway project.
Roadwork on Route 52 is scheduled to begin this year. The two-phase project is scheduled to be completed by late 2012. It includes northbound and southbound lanes of Route 52 and those portions of the bridges and roadway over the islands.
On July 13, Gaffney escorted the Herald on a site tour at the Training Center.
First stop, Gaffney showed a small mountain of MUA crushed glass, which he estimated at 1,000 cubic yards beside a 400 cubic yard mound of purified sand.
On the other side of a dune at the site, several workers using excavation equipment joined Al Brice of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Brice is a principal of Brice Environmental, based in Alaska, which has made a specialty of removing lead from rifle and artillery ranges for the U.S. Department of Defense.
A mechanized separator churned away at the loads of dredge material fed into it. A rough grate removed large items, such as roots, allowing the sand-clay mixture to be slowly moved by a screw-like device.
Washed by recycled water, purified by whale-like geo-tubes about 50 yards away, the clay fell out and looked like gray-brown golf balls.
Pure sand spits out the other end of the machine. It will be carted to that nearby 400-cubic-yard mound to be mixed with the crushed glass.
Funding for the project resulted from the first round of grants in the I Boat Program. The revenues came from increased boat registration fees that began in 2003. Thus boaters, who benefit from deeper, dredged waterways, are paying for the project.
That program provides grant funds to selected eligible applicants to promote, improve and enhance the marine industry in the state for the benefit of the general boating public.
Contact Campbell at (609) 886-8600 Ext 28 or: al.c@cmcherald.com