Author
Oldcastle Materials site receives special award for improving biodiversity
Reclaiming a spent sand-and-gravel mining facility is one thing. Having Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) recognize your efforts to partner with company employees, community organizations, youth groups and environmental education leaders in the process is quite another. WHC is a national organization that was established for the purpose of involving people in managing lands to provide enhanced habitat for wildlife. The WHC Corporate Lands for Learning program selected The Shelly Co.’s 96-acre former aggregate mining facility, Dresden Wildlife Habitat, as the winner of the 2013 Corporate Lands for Learning of the Year Award. WHC selects a single wildlife management project each year from a group of applicants in order to recognize outstanding environmental education, stewardship and voluntary employee efforts. Dresden Wildlife Habitat is adjacent to the Muskingum River in eastern Ohio. Previous mining practices there resulted in the creation of several lakes and ponds that are interspersed with riparian flood plain forest and seasonally wet meadows. Riparian zones, forests and grasslands provide habitats for a number of native Ohio species, including… Keep Reading
Behemoth: Upgrading a 25-year-old dragline
Vulcan Materials Co. upgrades the Bucyrus-Erie King Midas dragline – a 25-year-old marvel. There’s nothing mythical or fictitious about King Midas, the 25-cu.yd. modular Bucyrus-Erie 680-W walking dragline that was first purchased in 1989 by Ohio’s R&F Coal Co. In addition to bringing faster cycling times and AC electrics to coal pits, the more than 2-million-lb. dragline’s 225-ft. boom at 40 degrees, powered by a Siemens AC drive, proved to be the fastest cycling large dragline of its day. When Vulcan Materials Co. purchased the colossal machine to help its Sanger Sand & Gravel plant in Sanger, Calif., achieve expansion goals, transporting and upgrading the machine caused a new kind of stir. “We purchased the dragline in 2007,” says Max Pfaff, Vulcan’s area operations manager. “It was delivered to the Sanger plant site in 70 truck loads. For the next 10 months, we rebuilt, upgraded and modernized the entire machine, including the electrical system, which was our main concern.” In order to successfully convert the King Midas AC system to… Keep Reading
For the birds
Nebraska’s aggregates industry has established a successful partnership with environmental agencies to protect fragile bird populations. There are two tiny problems Nebraska sand-and-gravel companies deal with each year near the beginning of the mining season: threatened piping plovers and endangered least terns. Sand spoil piles found in gravel pits mimic the ideal sandy-gravelly habitat that these birds have instinctively nested on for centuries. Navigating around the birds and their chicks with bulldozers, scrapers and trucks is no easy task. Arriving at a solution to protect the birds during the height of Nebraska’s aggregate mining season has taken the time and cooperation of many entities, but it could provide a model other states might find helpful in resolving their own environmental protection activities. Conservation partnership Dr. Mary Bomberger Brown, coordinator of the Tern and Plover Conservation Partnership (TPCP), says the program was brought about in the late 1990s by Clemson University’s Dr. Ron Johnson (while he was on the University of Nebraska Extension faculty); fish and wildlife biologist Jeanine Lackey, who… Keep Reading
Rock-by-Rail
Vulcan Materials’ new program makes rail transportation a viable way to connect quarries and plants. Vulcan Materials Co. is known for implementing forward-thinking strategies that deliver consistently superior quality materials and services to its customers. Most recently, Vulcan has begun linking its aggregates resources with processing plants using rail transport lines in Southern California, one of the largest per-capita aggregate consumption regions in the U.S. Vulcan’s supply-demand assessment for the region revealed that major metropolitan areas, like Los Angeles, faced imminent aggregates shortages, which could have potentially restricted the region’s ability to fully realize the benefits of an economic recovery following the 2008 downturn. With an understanding that the emerging demand for aggregate materials would need to come from multiple sources, some of which lie beyond the metropolitan area, Vulcan developed its Rock-by-Rail program, an economically viable means of bringing aggregates by rail from its Big Rock Creek site in Antelope Valley to be processed at its Sun Valley plant, just north of downtown Los Angeles. “For years, the Sun… Keep Reading
Getting it together
A New England producer consolidates its operations and builds a bridge to better efficiency. Over the last seven years, Twin States Sand and Gravel pieced together a plan that allowed it to close down and sell a depleted gravel pit and consolidate mining, crushing and asphalt production to one site, significantly improving the bottom line. Twin States Sand and Gravel and Blaktop Inc. owners Warren “Bud” Ames and Stuart Close initiated their consolidation plans in 1998, when they moved their first equipment from the old 92-acre gravel pit at West Lebanon, N.H., to their new one at North Hartland, Vt. “All our crushing and washing was done in West Lebanon until 1998,” says Seth Ames, Warren’s son and third-generation Ames family senior management member. “That year, we moved our Svedala S-3000 gyratory crusher from West Lebanon to North Hartland and purchased the Svedala jaw and feeder for the Hartland site. After 1998, primary crushing was done in Hartland and finishing crushing and washing was completed at West Lebanon.” The move… Keep Reading
Bright ideas
Lehigh Hanson has found that in addition to Energy Star awards, cost savings are another result of smart energy use. Over the past 18 months, one of the largest construction materials companies in North America, Lehigh Hanson Inc., has captured two Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awards for energy efficiency at two of its aggregate production sites. The first award was given to the company’s Mission Valley Rock Plant in Sunol, Calif., in April 2013 when the plant site reduced their energy intensity by 12.2 percent over the course of one year. The second award, presented in June, went to the company’s Harding Street Plant in Indianapolis. Both plants were enrolled in the EPA Energy Star Challenge for Industry program, which was initiated in 2006. The EPA program was a good fit with Lehigh Hanson’s own 2010 initiative to evaluate energy consumption efficiency at its 600-plus operations located in the U.S. and Canada. Leroy Goree, Lehigh Hanson senior electrical engineering manager with the company’s aggregates technical support group, says the fact… Keep Reading
Like a good neighbor
Memphis Stone & Gravel Co. goes the extra mile for area residents by instituting a Good Neighbor Trucking Policy. Question: Do aggregate companies have any leverage for managing the behavior of truck drivers who don’t work directly for them? Tennessee’s Memphis Stone & Gravel Co. (MSG) had to answer that question a few years ago when the company received complaints from residents about truck-traffic issues involving drivers hauling its products. At the outset, it seemed MSG would have little power to impose the rules that governed its own employees on truckers hired by a second or third party. But a determined effort to maintain the corporate policy of safe and responsible trucking helped MSG identify a simple process to influence truck-driving behavior. That realization led MSG to develop a Good Neighbor Trucking Policy (GNTP) four years ago. “Our policy contains three essential elements,” says Alan Parks, MSG vice president. “First, it outlines both onsite and offsite rules that apply generally to all our facilities and employees. The second component of… Keep Reading
Road Connection team crosses finish line
“Where will future highway funds come from?” That was the question of the day as KPI-JCI and Astec Mobile Screens brought their year-long nationwide “Road Connection” campaign to a close at the Road Connection Wrap-Up Rally held at the company's Yankton, S.D., facility. During the campaign, KPI-JCI Advertising Manager Curt Peterka and Performance Marketing's Andrew Gillman covered 39 states, traveling more than 35,000 miles to reach half a million consumers with their message about the importance of adequate highway funding. In his comments to rally attendees, Joe Vig, group vice president of KPI-JCI, noted that the work done to organize the Road Connection campaign was “phenomenal. The highway bill is important to KPI-JCI and to everyone in our community,” he went on to say. “It impacts everyone in the nation. We need to continue to look at ways to fund future highway bills.” Educating the public The Road Connection’s purpose was to help make the public aware that the nation’s 4 million miles of roads and approximately 594,000 bridges require… Keep Reading
