Editor's Focus: Putting Out Fires

Do you ever wonder how the C&D recycling industry can get a bad name, making it difficult to operate and sell product? For an explanation look no further than Fresno, Calif., where Archie Crippen Excavating is making a mockery of the industry and its regulators.

The following information is based on reports from the Fresno Bee newspaper. The story starts out with the privately owned Crippen "speculatively accumulating" mixed C&D at its site, which was headquarters for a demolition contracting business. While Archie Crippen, the owner, did have a permit to recycle concrete and asphalt at the site, he did not have one for recycling mixed C&D materials, which is what he said he was going to do. Reportedly, though, little of this material was actually processed. So the pile grew, and while state and local authorities knew about the growing mess, they did little to stem the tide. The Blob grew to about five acres and three stories high.

Then the pile caught fire and burned for a month. Not surprisingly, the fire started naturally, caused by the wood in the stack spontaneously combusting. Unfortunately, Fresno, which is in the San Joaquin Valley, was experiencing a weather inversion at the time. The thick smoke from the fire stayed in the area and low to the ground, and respiratory ailments began popping up among the residents of Fresno, especially those with asthma and other existing conditions. School children were not allowed out for recess for two weeks. Meanwhile the local fire department, supplemented by state and federal experts, battled the huge blaze for weeks before finally bringing it under control.

The cost was staggering. Besides the human health toll, the governments combined spent millions to put out the fire. Then the finger pointing began, with the politicians jumping in for the public relations value.

Next up were lawsuits. Fresno wanted Crippen to pay for the clean up of the site and some of the fire fighting costs. Crippen said he was broke (this after years of accepting tip fees on much of the material at the site). To shut Crippen’s operation down, the city got a court order and installed a red tag on the site’s gates to stop the trucks from coming in. Crippen defied the court order, cut the tag off, and kept the concrete/asphalt recycling and public truck scale part of his business going. In addition, he was quoted in the paper calling the people who got the court order against him "idiots."

From here the whole story goes into Wonderland. Crippen sued the city for $10 million, saying it is their fault he built that pile up that high and that they never told him it would catch fire. Then the state approached the local landfill, controlled by the county, and wanted between $1.8 million to $2.5 million in dump fees waived so all the debris from the Crippen site could be sent there as alternative daily cover. The size of the debris pile would probably overwhelm the landfill.

The other demolition contractors and C&D haulers in the area were outraged at this last ploy, as they had been paying the landfill hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for years to legally dump their material, while Crippen had been avoiding that expense but stacking it on his land. They demanded that they not have to pay to dump, as well, and wanted their funds back retroactively to the beginning of 2003.

This story is continuing in Fresno, and for those who want to follow it further, go to www.fresnobee.com and type Crippen into the search engine. Almost every day there is another article about what is happening in this sad scene. Unfortunately, when people think of our industry, it is often the Crippens of the world they refer to, not the good operators diverting millions of tons from landfills and saving our natural resources. If we’re not careful, the good story we have to tell can be lost in the smoke.