Mountain of Metal

Steel is king, especially the recovery of it, at the ISP Environmental Services chemical plant demolition in Linden, N.J., not far from the Newark airport. More than 5,000 tons of metal, most of it ferrous, are being reclaimed at the 144-acre site in the heart of the famous "tank farms of Linden."

The heavily industrial site is being cleared as part of a "brownfields" project near Grasselli Point. ISP itself is directing the remediation, clean up, demolition and related activities at its site.

As Dave McNichol, program manager, waste and remediation for ISP explains it, the company has the institutional knowledge to handle the job. "We know what was made there and what it was used for, and what will and will not be encountered."

And what an interesting job it is. Twenty-two buildings are on the level site next to a waterway and on top of filled-in marshland. These are mostly steel and brick structures that run as high as 75 feet tall built on 30-foot pilings. Eight of these are sturdily built buildings that were probably built in the 1940s and 1950s. Three of these buildings and a water tower were imploded in February by Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), Phoenix, Md.

"The steel on these buildings is so thick and heavy that there was no possible way to get a shear up there and take it down safely," says Eric Saunders, principal, J&L Management. "That is why we had to implode them."

Both the ferrous and nonferrous metals being recovered are the property of J&L, which must process it before sending it off to a scrap dealer. Philip Kennedy, principal, J&L, said the plate and structural steel spec for the metal is 5 feet or less. "It’s a mill grade, rather than foundry grade," he says. He added that J&L is trying to process the metal as far as possible because it is worth more, but time constraints limit what they can do.

J&L’s headquarters in Michigan is a long way from the large petroleum and chemical tanks of Linden, N.J., making personnel issues, especially on-site operators, a concern. The company has brought four of its own operators to run the demolition excavators and has hired three local operators to fill out the crew roster. The four company operators occupy the seats of the more difficult and important takedown equipment, while the other operators are engaged in material handling chores.

The seats these operators fill are all Caterpillar, while the attachments they work are mostly LaBounty. The largest material handling machine is a Cat 375 with an attached 70R LaBounty shear. Two 345s (one with a LaBounty UP50 and the other with its own 70R), and three 330s (one with a Cat MP20, the next with a LaBounty straight shear, and their third with a 60-inch Walker magnet), are also on site. A Cat 320 with an HDR110 grapple for material handling rounds out the fleet. Cleveland Wrecking also has a LinkBelt excavator with an attached grapple on site.

The 345 with the 70R has teeth welded onto either side of the jaw. This nifty little idea, developed by J&L, allows the operator to scrape the brick off of the inside of the I-beam flanges.

Besides processing the large amount of metal at the site, J&L is pulverizing the concrete and passing over it with the magnet to remove the metal. The concrete is staying on the site to help raise the entire grade by a level of six inches. Cleveland Wrecking sends most of the other building debris to a New Jersey landfill.