C&D News

The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) is conducting a test to determine the long-term costs and benefits of concrete and asphalt as paving surfaces for state highways.

Two different contractors are currently preparing to each pave an eight-mile stretch of U.S. 30 in Ohio. One contractor will pave the west-bound lanes with asphalt, and the other will pave the east-bound lanes with concrete.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that ODOT is conducting the experiment to determine which road material is more durable, quieter, smoother and an overall better buy when compared in like weather and traffic conditions.

The stretch of U.S. 30, which runs between Wooster and Orrville, is being expanded from a two-lane road to a four-lane divided highway.

The project cost is budgeted at $42 million, with the paving portion of the job representing a quarter of the total cost.

The Plain Dealer notes that Flexible Pavements of Ohio, the asphalt industry’s trade group, says it will do the initial paving more inexpensively. However, the Ohio Concrete Construction Association says that the long-term durability offered by concrete is the key to real value.

Saying current landfill financial assurance rules and landfill regulations are a "ticking time bomb" that stifles recycling, the GrassRoots Recycling Network, Madison, Wis., and the Sierra Club, San Francisco, are pressuring the California Integrated Waste Management Board, Sacramento, to rethink its landfill regulations.

The pressure is in the form of a petition recommending that some materials be prohibited from being "disposed in the ground where it keeps the waste load potentially biologically active—and capable of generating a whole second wave of dangerous leachate and landfill gases when site engineering systems fail—effectively forever," the coalition says.

It also calls for financial assurance bonds to be increased to reflect the true cost of long-term landfill maintenance. The coalition says that some provisions are as low as $5 million, which it says is barely enough to mow the lawn for the first 30 years of mandated post-closure care.