Demolition Job Story -- Gambling with Change

Since 1975, the Mescalero Apache Reservation has been operating a resort property called the Inn of the Mountain Gods in the Sierra Blanca Mountains of southern New Mexico. The resort, now valued at $20 million, was once a five-star destination. Twenty-eight years after construction, the resort is being torn down to make way for a new gaming casino, convention center, golf course, bars and restaurants, sporting clays course and big game hunting preserve.

The Inn of the Mountain Gods resort employs up to 300 people seasonally. One-third of these workers are from the Mescalero Apache tribe, with other employees commuting from the nearby towns of Ruidoso, Capitan and Tularosa. The reservation itself spans 720 square miles. It is famous for warriors such as Geronimo and Cochise. Today, approximately 4,000 Apache tribal members call the reservation their home.

The Mescalero Apache tribe has continued to develop new enterprises for economic successes. In addition to the luxury resort, they own a wood products business, a livestock business and a ski resort. Tourism has been very successful. The area has been a getaway for vacationers for decades. In fact, the Ski Apache—considered a top-notch ski area in the Southwest—accommodates 300,000 visitors a year. The new resort along Lake Mescalero is scheduled to open November 2004. An existing casino remains open during demolition and new construction, which is valued at more than $112 million

Demolition work, which commenced in January of 2003, began with stripping the old hotel building of material that could be processed in a grinder. The crew chose this method over simply demolishing the complex with a wrecking ball and hauling all debris to the local dump.

Waste reduction was key, Larry Clayton, area manager for Ruidoso Paving Company, Ruidoso, N.M., says. Centex Construction Co. of Dallas— the general, design and building contractor on the job—hired Ruidoso Paving for the demolition work. In addition to the obvious efficiencies associated with hauling reduced debris, this method also satisfied the desires of the Mescalero Apache Indian tribe.

"The tribe is very environmentally aware and wanted to reduce the amount of waste that was taken to the landfill on the reservation," Aaron Blair, project superintendent for Centex Construction Co., says.

Because the older, existing landfill on the reservation offered only limited space, crews chose to prepare a new landfill on-site to handle the excess waste. However, they wanted to use it only as much as necessary.

Clayton estimates that crews reduced the volume of waste by two-thirds using a Vermeer HG525 horizontal grinder. They loaded the grinder with materials permitted for safe processing, including lumber, wire, carpet and wooden window frames.

"We went through the structure and removed the solid materials and heavy metals: steel doors, steel door frames, pipe, steel beams underneath the structure and bathroom fixtures," Clayton says. "Once all that was removed, we used our backhoe to punch it down into piles, and we pushed it to the grinding area with dozers. Then, we used another backhoe to load the machine, while monitoring the material to ensure it was appropriate for the machine."

Ruidoso Paving is a division of W&W Contracting, a company with approximately 300 employees that has been in business since 1983. While this part of the W&W Contracting company normally does paving and site development work, such as land-clearing jobs, the division was called upon to assist with the massive project of demolishing the existing Inn of the Mountain Gods on the reservation.

"This is a unique project for us—it’s not something that we do on a regular basis— but this particular project fits us because it’s local," Clayton says. "We’ll do more jobs like this if it makes sense."

Being high in the mountains, the crew faced weather problems, causing some delays. Snow that fell melted in just a day or two, but the clay soil conditions made it too slick for the dozers to push debris over to the grinder; the backhoe had a tough time maneuvering also.

The terrain of the site presented some issues, too. "The resort is basically built into the side of a hill," Clayton says. "So, it took some time to get the material we were processing the short distance to the grinder with the dozers because the ground was uneven."

This is the first time Clayton has used a Vermeer horizontal grinder, and he says he is quite pleased with the productivity and power of the machine, which he estimates processed 100 tons of debris per hour on the job.

Clayton chose the horizontal grinder model because it was easy and efficient to lift debris from the piles on the ground onto the machine’s conveyer that loads material into the machine. His crew worked diligently during the job to stay on schedule. "We worked six days a week, eight to nine hours a day," he says. "It’s done a heck of a job for us. It grinds the material in a hurry."

Although the demolition of this resort could have resulted in much more waste, the environmental principles of the tribe certainly stand out as an example for other communities who are preparing for demolition projects. The end result is that almost 70 percent less volume of waste was sent to the landfill, which will pay off for generations to come.