Solid waste agency, city to test unique 'deconstruction' idea to turn wood from flood-damaged homes into energy

The local solid waste agency and City Hall want to see if it makes sense to “harvest” wood from flood-damaged homes to keep it out of the landfill after demolition.

The two government entities will conduct a pilot “deconstruction” project on three flood-damaged homes now owned by the city - 1231 Fifth St. SE, 208 11th Ave. SE and 1021 Fifth St. NW - to study the cost and time that go into saving the wood so it can be ground up and burned for energy.

Marie DeVries, planner and contract administrator for the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency, said Monday that the trial deconstruction project would differ from “traditional” deconstruction in which workers spend several days before demolition salvaging materials from a home for reuse.

The trial, she said, is designed to harvest wood quickly and then to see if the approach can be used on a large scale as the city embarks on the “incredible amount of work” to demolish some 1,200 flood-damaged homes in the months ahead.

DeVries said most of the flood-damaged homes have mold inside of them and some are attracting varmints. Such health and safety risks, she said, have convinced the city to take the structures down as quickly as possible once the homes are bought out.

The solid waste agency is pushing the pilot project because of the agency's commitment to divert as much as possible from the landfill, she said.

The agency currently grinds up pallets and other wood that comes to the landfill and then the agency ships the material to a power plant in Cassville, Wis. The agency doesn't make money on the endeavor, and it likely will not make money if it harvests wood before the demolition of flood-damaged homes, DeVries said.

But she called the savings to the agency and the community “invaluable” if the agency can free up some valuable landfill space that otherwise will be used if the agency is not able to divert some of the wood in the property demolition process.

“You can hardly put a price on that,” DeVries said. She noted that the agency spent a decade trying to find a new site for a landfill before it finally was able to expand its Site 2 landfill at County Home Road and Highway 13.

DeVries said the agency is working to design the deconstruction pilot project with Dave Bennick, owner of RE-USE Consulting, Bellingham, Wash. Bennick has used tactics which combine the use of manual labor and heavy equipment, she said.

The hope is that the deconstruction as part of a demolition can be done in a timely and cost-efficient way that competes with the cost of a regular demolition, which DeVries said can cost between $10,000 and $12,000 a home. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will cover demolition costs of the flood-damaged properties, she said.

DeVries said the solid waste agency also is looking long term and hopes the pilot project will lead to a deconstruction technique that can be used locally long after flood recovery is over.

 “Cities have structures that they have to take down every year,” she said. “ … If we can figure this out and get some experience and get some people trained locally and we can use this technique on even a portion of the flood structures, great. But even more than that, if we can get this into our psyche and start capturing material from these structures long term, that would be a great thing, too.”