While there remain significant and glaring gaps in our understanding of disaster waste management, progress over recent years in response to major natural disasters has provided valuable insight into best practices moving forward.
By William Hansen
A natural disaster brings to mind many thoughts and concerns, but perhaps the least considered at the time of the event is waste management. Accounting for as much as 40 percent of all disaster-related costs, the solid waste generated by a natural disaster can equate to more than 15 years of solid waste output by the affected community. But aside from the costs and logistics of cleanup efforts, solid waste and debris can impede search and rescue efforts if not prioritized in the wake of a disaster.
Furthermore, the impact on the local economy and municipal waste facilities can leave officials reeling for years to come. As research has shown, the severity of disaster waste can have considerably more substantial impact in underdeveloped areas of the world.
Hurricane Sandy
In the U.S, the EPA is given oversight over responsible waste management and cleanup in the wake of natural disasters, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency coordinating cleanup efforts on a local scale. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, which was the deadliest and most destructive storm of 2012, the agency claimed that nearly 95 percent of the debris in New York was removed within 95 days of the storm hitting the northeastern state, but most of the affected areas did not fare as well.
A Category 3 hurricane that swept over 1,100 miles of the Atlantic coast, Sandy affected 24 states including the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. with damage totaling $71 billion. But more shockingly is the realization that despite extensive planning and preparation efforts by local, state and federal agencies, cleanup efforts from the storm continue nearly three years later.
New York City鈥檚 Build It Back program, which was established in response to the storm, views 2016 as the deadline for returning the city鈥檚 boroughs back to normal, but in a mess of red tape, some residents are still struggling to restore their homes and property to pre-storm conditions.
About 60 percent of homeowners that applied for assistance from the program have been completed as of October 2015, but more than 800 structures still have not seen notable progress, leaving their residents living in subpar, dangerous, or unlivable conditions depending on the severity of the damage. In New Jersey, less than half of the $4 billion in the Community Development Block Grant has been distributed to homeowners in the state as of May 2015, leaving residents without adequate protection from another serious weather event. A recent poll by Rutgers-Eagleton states that more than half of New Jersey residents do not consider the state to be 鈥渂ack to normal鈥� three years after Hurricane Sandy.
Deadlier still may be the lingering conditions left by the storm. As with Hurricane Katrina, a serious concern for homes that experienced flooding or excess moisture is the presence of mold and mildew in construction materials, which can lead to chronic infections and illnesses in occupants.
Physical remnants of the storm remain a steady reminder of the devastation in New York, with waterways still clogged with abandoned or seriously damaged vessels. Nate Grove, senior manager for New York City鈥檚 Department of Parks and Recreation, estimates that nearly 600 boats posed serious public safety hazards in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. 鈥淭hey are navigational, environmental and public safety hazards,鈥� Grove told the New York Times in November. Modern capsized vessels, unlike their traditionally wooden ancestors, do not rot away naturally and break apart over time. Fiberglass, the leading construction material in most boats, may endure in the region鈥檚 waters for the foreseeable future if not addressed. On top of the potential permanent impact to New York鈥檚 waters, most of the abandoned ships continue to leak fuel, further polluting the already heavily trafficked waterways around the city.
Hurricane Katrina
Perhaps the most infamous storm in the history of the U.S., Katrina was a Category 5 major hurricane that ripped through the Atlantic Gulf Coast in 2005. The total estimated property damage was estimated at $108 billion鈥攏early four times the damage from Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Much has been written about the aftermath of the storm, but information gleaned from the region鈥檚 successes and failures in cleaning up the damage continues to shape policy and preparation methods more than a decade later.
In southeast Louisiana, which was the region hit hardest by the storm, more than 38 million cubic yards of debris was removed and relocated to landfills in the region. That鈥檚 equivalent to filling the entire Superdome with debris three times, costing state, local and federal agencies more than $174 million in debris removal after the storm. In total, Katrina generated over 100 million cubic yards of debris, more than twice the previous record.
In addition to the sheer volume of physical debris present in the aftermath of the disaster, air quality, mold, water pollution and floodwater contamination continues to be a concern for officials in the affected regions of the American south. Katrina alone caused nine separate oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, ranking among one of the largest oil spills in U.S. history.
But one of the most significant results of slow or inadequate response to significant debris and waste removal was the social and economic issues that followed in the months after Katrina. Much of the looting and rioting that followed was made more severe by the lack of access to roadways and city streets, limiting emergency response efforts and facilitating the general disruption to local businesses. Furthermore, the debris created a concerning growth environment for toxic sediment and poor management of clean up efforts resulted in widespread illegal dumping by frustrated residents.
Two years after the storm made landfall, state and local officials struggled to keep up with the amount of illegal dumping let alone making any preventative efforts to stop the large-scale littering. In fact, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana testified that illegal dumping in New Orleans was 鈥渘ot being controlled in any meaningful way,鈥� citing the state鈥檚 lack of resources and personnel with the authority to make environmental arrests in addition to the overworked police forces struggling to keep up with violent crime in the devastated city.
Takeaways
One of the most promising developments in responsible, environmentally-conscious disaster waste management is still ongoing. In the wake of the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that infamously damaged a nuclear power facility at Fukushima, Japan, the nation鈥檚 cleanup efforts captured an astonishing 22 million tons of reusable biomass. As a result, Japanese officials have implemented an aggressive plan to reuse and recapture biofuel from the wreckage, building several biomass plants to use the recycled fuel.
Of course, problems with saltwater and radiation contamination of the biomass is unique to the Fukushima disaster and would not be present in other natural disasters in landlocked territories. The U.S. Departments of Energy, the Interior and Agriculture have created a joint effort to recapture and reuse woody biomass after disasters. The Woody Biomass Utilization Group, established in 2004, is an interagency task force dedicated to exploring and implementing woody biomass in forest and rangeland restoration efforts as well as hazardous fuel treatment projects all across the U.S.
In ideal situations, reclaimed biomass would be harvested from debris sites and taken to an appropriate biomass power plant in the region for sorting and processing before using the refuse as fuel. Due to the considerable fuel sourcing flexibility of these plants, the potential output for reclaimed disaster biomass is very high. The complications lie in planning, sorting and storage capabilities by state, federal and local agencies responding to natural or man-made disasters.
Temporary structures are often used to house displaced residents, volunteers, first responders, hospital surges and refugees after a disaster, but larger, easily deployable structures are often needed to ensure proper storage and processing of debris during the recovery process.
From an organizational and logistics standpoint, there is no shortage of options available to government officials seeking fast-response construction for support facilities in the wake of a disaster. The unfortunate reality is that many municipalities lack the resources on-hand to adequately house and protect reusable waste and debris in response to a disaster, let alone facilities equipped to deal with medical emergencies and temporary housing.
Steps to Accommodating Rapid Expansion in Waste Management and Cleanup Post-Disaster
As described in leading studies, the three phases in disaster waste management are as follows:
- Emergency response鈥擡mphasis on debris management to facilitate life-threatening circumstances, preservation of life and emergency services, and removal of immediate threats to public health and safety hazards
- Recovery鈥擬anagement of debris in an effort to restore lifeline restoration and building demolition (if necessary)
- Rebuild鈥擱euse of disaster debris and generated waste for reconstruction efforts
In emergency situations, these steps are rarely鈥攊f ever鈥攄istinct. In terms of waste management, the first phase (emergency response) is often complete within a couple of weeks. During this phase, there is very little opportunity for recycling and waste diversion efforts, which can sacrifice materials that may otherwise be useable if harvested in a timely fashion.
However, as numerous authors have documented, the importance of temporary staging and preparation areas for recycling and waste processing is a vital aspect of the recovery and rebuilding phases that follow. Because they provide extra time to appropriately sort and recycle much of the debris, a network of secure, reliable structures is an essential element of the recovery process.
According to post-disaster guidelines established by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it鈥檚 up to local authorities to expand the recycling and waste management facilities in the area to accommodate incoming debris. UN recommendations for temporary waste sorting and processing sites include:
- Construction on public lands to reduce deployment time
- Areas for unloading and storage of hauled debris
- Inclusion of stationary material processing sites
- Protection from theft of materials, moisture and leaks that may permeate to groundwater
The guidelines prioritize processing of valuable and potentially hazardous materials first before moving to plastics, concrete, bricks and wooden construction materials recovered from disaster areas. While the document includes no specific timelines as to when debris should be completely sorted, the sooner local officials can establish waste management sites, process debris and return the site to its original state, the greater the chances of maximum debris recycling.
While there remain significant and glaring gaps in our understanding of disaster waste management, progress over recent years in response to major natural disasters has provided valuable insight into best practices moving forward. As our general knowledge grows and becomes more refined, our chances of better preserving life and rebuilding in a responsible manner become more and more likely. | WA
William Hansen is an engineering and implementation specialist at Alaska Structures (Anchorage, AK) who has been working in the industrial construction and demolition industries for over 25 years. His thorough understanding of industry requirements enables him to provide valuable insight and service to clients around the world. For more information, call (888) 370-1800 or e-mail [email protected].
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