Storm-Struck City Relies on Recycling to Aid Cleanup Efforts
Contractor uses Vermeer grinders to process city’s overflow of green waste
When a massive windstorm struck Bountiful, Utah, the magnitude of the green waste to deal with
was overwhelming. Partnering with a local tree-service and wood-waste processing company,
Bob’s Tree Service, Inc., the City of Bountiful Landfill quickly developed a plan to clear out and
process the excessive amounts of waste, relying on both organizations’ recycling operations to
speed up cleanup efforts.
The storm hits
In the early morning hours of Thursday, December 1, 2011, residents in Bountiful, named both for
the city's reputation as a garden place and a city in the Book of Mormon, were awakened by
hurricane-force, down-sloping winds slamming into their city. Because down-sloping winds
increase in intensity as they come over a mountain and down into a valley area, the National
Weather Service registered sustained winds of 40 to 55 miles (64.4 to 88.5 km) per hour with
gusts greater than 75 miles (120.7 km) per hour, as the massive windstorm struck, rattling
windows, blowing over semi trailers, toppling trees and downing power lines.
“It was about 2:30 in the morning when we got the first call from police dispatch, saying a tree
was blown across one of the city’s main streets,” says Bountiful Streets, Sanitation and Landfill
Superintendent Gary Blowers. “We worked to get it cleared away by 6 a.m., and from then on, we
were inundated with calls saying trees had been blown down citywide. Most of the downed trees
were those huge pines that had been uprooted. And when the trees go down, they take the power
lines with them.”
The cleanup process begins
As they emerged from their homes to assess the havoc wreaked on their town, city residents
faced power outages, road closures, below-freezing temperatures, as well as the threat of
another violent windstorm. In addition to the extensive property damage, residents also had to
contend with an overflow of green waste.
“On Saturday, the weather forecasters predicted another round of down-sloping winds to strike
soon,” says Blowers. “We were concerned that all of the debris residents had cleared out of their
yards and set along the roads for pickup could get airborne during the second storm. Along with
the mayor and city manager, we contacted the local churches and urged them to cancel their
services that day so their members could haul as much debris to our landfill as possible.”
According to local news reports, the line at the landfill on Sunday stretched for miles. To alleviate
some of the congestion, city officials opened a secondary dump site that day in the parking lot
behind Bountiful High School. Materials brought to this site were loaded into side-dump trucks
and taken to the landfill.
Waiving the normal $3 dumping fee, Blowers says that the landfill opened at 7:30 that morning
and didn’t close until 9:30 that night. “It was incredible, the amount of people who came that day
to drop off material,” continues Blowers. “It helped us clear most of what was on the streets from
Thursday’s storm in a matter of just a couple of days.”
After the initial drop-off, residents still had three to four weeks’ worth of stumps and tree limbs to
clear up and haul out. According to Blowers, “If the residents got the materials out to the curb, we
hauled it away.”
Dealing with the waste
To accommodate the influx of green-waste material, Blowers says that the city’s landfill freed up
several acres of space to set up four different staging areas — one designated for commercial
use, contractors with large dump trucks; and three areas where residents could come in to unload
their waste by hand.
Because of the amount of the green waste the landfill needed to recycle, Blowers contracted
professionals to grind the green waste. One company that helped Blowers’ crews grind was Bob’s
Tree Service of Wood Cross, Utah, which has been working with the landfill for over six years.
According to owner Dave Barton, BTS Land Clearing and BTS Recycling started as a small treeservice company with land-clearing contracts, including projects tearing out trees for road
widening jobs, and eventually branched out to tackling demolition and green-waste recycling
work. “Rather than take all the waste material to the landfill, we decided to buy a grinder and
started recycling all those trees,” says Barton.
To tackle green-waste recycling projects, Barton’s company owns three Vermeer tub grinders —
a TG400 and TG400L, and one TG800.
“We were on-site at the landfill grinding three times in the aftermath of the storm, each time for six
to seven days,” says Barton. Blowers also brought in a second contractor, Kimball Equipment
from Salt Lake City, to supplement the work being done by Barton’s crews.
The grinders focused on getting the landfill’s main staging areas, where green-waste materials
are normally dumped, cleared first, and then the grinders tackled the large-truck material. “We did
it this way so we could get a big space opened back up quickly, to manage new materials being
dropped off,” says Blowers.
Managing the by-product
To process all the waste quickly, the grinding crews first ground the waste into a coarse, 4- to 6inch grind (10.2 to 15.2 cm) and laid it out flat in 6-foot-tall (1.8 m) piles to keep the material from
composting, or “cooking,” as Blowers calls it.
According to Blowers, the landfill will not begin truly managing the material until they regrind it into
finer material. At that point, they will start using it as their screening material for composting.
“Instead of taking the time to grind it all fine and start composting while we’re so busy, we now
have acres of excess material stocked up to process as we need it,” says Blowers.
Until the landfill is ready to begin the composting process, Blower’s crews have been watering the
piles when they get warm and turning them regularly, approximately every two weeks to prevent
any issues. “We have a temperature gauge on the piles that we watch,” says Blowers. “When the
temperature starts going up, we water and turn the piles to make sure we don’t have any
spontaneous combustion.”
A lot of this activity is weather-dependent, added Blowers. “It’s been a pretty dry summer here so
we’ve had to water and turn the piles a lot. When we get monsoon moisture, that helps put a lot of
water into the piles all at once, so then we have to water and turn less. Our winters are pretty wet,
so we don’t have to manage the piles quite as much then either,” says Blowers.
Because of the windstorm, the city of Bountiful Landfill took in about 20,000 (18,143.7 tonnes) of
green waste in 2011. In previous years, the average has been around 8,000 tons (7257.4 tonnes)
per year of green waste. To give scope to the amount of waste processed in the aftermath of the
storm, Blowers says, “In the last six months, we have ground approximately a year’s worth of
green waste. Most of it was brought to us right after the storm, in December and the first week
January. The amount of green waste to recycle in the storm’s aftermath was enormous.”
Once his crews start composting and putting the material into windrows, Blowers says it will take
about a year before the landfill will have a final product available. The final grind for the recycled
green waste will be 2 inches (5.1 cm) or less. “We just did our last grind in early July (2012),”
adds Blowers.
The landfill will sell the screened, or fine ground, compost for $30 a ton. They will have
unscreened compost, or coarse material, available for $20 a ton, and wood chips will be available
for $20 a ton. They also will sell a 30-pound bag of compost for $2.
Others chip in on cleanup efforts
While keeping his TG800 busy at the City of Bountiful Landfill, Barton also used his two TG400
tub grinders back on their own yard.
“We were very busy at that time too,” says Barton, “helping our customers handle debris from the
storm. Like the landfill, we also grind up and recycle green waste — we process around 10,000
yards (9144.0 m) of material a year. In our own yard, we also grind for other cities and counties
throughout Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.”
Once the material is ground, Bob’s Tree Service then composted it and mixed it with their topsoil.
“We have a program going at our yard that makes nice, weed-free topsoil with recycled green
waste,” says Barton. “To do this, we mix the grind with the topsoil, a little horse manure and
enough mulch that it begins to compost. We then heat up this mixture to about 140 to 150
degrees Fahrenheit (60 – 65 degrees C), and at that point it kills all the weeds in the topsoil.
Finally, the mixture is screened resulting in organic rich topsoil.”
In the aftermath
Now that the majority of waste produced by the storm has been dealt with, Blowers points out that
he and his crew at the landfill learned many lessons by going through this experience. “One of the
things we learned was to make sure we had plenty of spare space to handle the overwhelming
influx of debris that came in all at once,” says Blowers. “Also, by having the spare space available
to handle the large amount of material we needed to process allowed us to get the people in and
out of the facility as quickly as possible and allowed us to deal with the waste after people were
away from it.
“Another lesson we learned is that we needed to have plenty of trained help, familiar with our
facility, on-hand and ready to work,” says Blowers.
Finally, Blowers says, it’s critical to keep accurate documentation throughout the event in order to
adhere to state permitting and to receive FEMA assistance. These agencies require a lot of
groundwater monitoring, such as how much materials or chemicals are in the water, as well as
dust control.
“A lot has changed in the solid waste industry over the years, and most of it is due to recycling,”
finishes Blowers. “Because recycling — metal, electronics, carpet, batteries, and of course, green
waste — is such a big part of our business, it’s important that we do all the paperwork to stay in
compliance.”
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