C&D News

The Board of Directors of the National Association of Demolition Contractors (NADC) has voted 14-3 to change the name of the group to the National Demolition Association.

The March 28 vote reflects the results of a survey asking the general membership about changing the association’s name.

Michael Taylor, the NADC’s executive director, says roughly 64 percent of respondents want the name changed to more accurately reflect the association’s mission and to more fully represent all segments of the demolition industry. No date was announced for the association’s name change to take effect.

In other actions, the board heard from several groups that wanted to partner more closely with NADC, including the Brownfields Association, Chicago, the Used Building Materials Association, Oakland, Calif.; and Purdue University, West Layfayette, Ind., where the Construction Management Department wants to establish a demolition discipline, complete with a funded chair.

Wood fuel derived from demolition scrap will continue to find a home in New England if the Boralex subsidiary of Cascades, Kingsey Falls, Quebec, Canada, has anything to say about it.

Eric Dumont of Boralex told attendees of the Maine Recycling & Solid Waste Conference, held in early April in Rockport, that its biomass plants that are approved to burn clean demolition wood may consume up to 450,000 tons per year of the product.

Boralex owns eight biomass plants, five of which are in Maine, one in New York state and two in Quebec. Three of the Maine plants are operational, though they are not all approved to burn demolition wood. "I don’t believe we could afford to run all three of these plants without the C&D wood," he said.

The 11th Annual Maine Recycling & Solid Waste Conference was organized and hosted by the Maine Resource Recovery Association, based in Bangor, Maine.