The Reclaiming of Newton North

While students are studying this spring in the brand-new Newton North High School, a few hundred feet away, demolition workers are doing their own three R's: reclaiming, reusing, and recycling.

It might look like the old Newton North is just being torn down and hauled away to a landfill, but most of it is actually getting recycled in one form or another. (To view our photo gallery of the current demolition site at Newton North, click through the images in the box to the right.)

 "It's silly to pay (to dispose of material) when there's a value in it," says Steven Wilkins, the project manager with Dimeo Construction Co., which is overseeing the demolition that's actually carried out by subcontractor Costello Dismantling. "It's a revenue stream for the subcontractor--it drives their cost down and ultimately results in overall project savings to the owner."

One of the key materials that can be reclaimed from the old Newton North is steel, mainly from the huge structural beams. According to Wilkins, it is hauled to a metals reclamation company in Chelsea, further segregated, cut and sheared into smaller sizes. The steel is ultimately shipped to China--some 4,000 tons of it worth around three-quarters of a million dollars.

Scanning the demolition site, one can also see huge mounds of steel rods with chunks of concrete still attached to them. That all goes to a facility which separates the two materials and recycles the steel.

"The ABC's of Demolition"

Other key materials that have to be dealt with, and recycled, are often referred to as "the ABC's of demolition": asphalt, brick and concrete.

The brick and mortar end up in a facility in Stoughton, which crushes the material for use as fill and aggregates in other projects. (This is sometimes called "downcycling.") Similarly, the concrete is segregated at the demolition site and hauled to a facility that crushes it for use as aggregate in the manufacturing of concrete, and for subbase materials beneath highway construction projects or underneath parking lots in lieu of gravel and crushed stone.

According to Wilkins, the demolition of NNHS is "proceeding pretty expeditiously." The building and foundation should be gone by mid-July, and during the rest of the summer, they'll be installing a drainage system and laying down two ball fields, a soccer field and a parking lot, along with landscaping.

Hurdles Faced in Demo Process

One of the challenges in the project, according to Wilkins, is simply that it is going on in a densely populated residential area and in close proximity to public streets. Besides the protective green fencing and concrete barricades, the demolition crew also waters down areas that are being torn down and ensures compliance with the city's noise ordinances. Moreover, the 30 to 35 trucks that pass to and from the site each day are timed to mitigate traffic congestion.

Another kind of challenge is contaminated materials, which primarily include asbestos in the coatings and other protective materials--products from the 1970s when the school was built.

"They were identified early by the city's abatement consultant," says Wilkins. "At the front end of the project, through the fall into winter, the interior was under abatement to remove asbestos-containing materials....It's a highly regulated process and the work was performed strictly within the protocols of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. All asbestos-containing material was shipped out of state to regulated disposal sites."

Besides hazardous materials, some other materials also can't be recycled, such as ceiling tiles, insulation, drywall, carpet and floor tile. They are disposed of as general debris.

Finding a New Life for Old Materials

At the other end of the spectrum are items that get salvaged at the beginning of the project, such as metal doors, laboratory casework and shop equipment. But there wasn't much wood or copper to recycle, according to Wilkins.

"We've had some unique requests," Wilkins adds, "(People who wanted) doorknobs, lockers, all sorts of things." Last year, the City of Newton auctioned off many items on a website before the demolition began.

In the future, then, it is possible that a Newton North High School graduate will be studying, working, or traveling--in China or elsewhere in the world--and come across a building made with steel from his or her high school.

"Recycling wasn't that prevalent 25 years ago," Wilkins points out. "Now we're reusing, reusing, and reusing again. It's a more environmentally-conscious  world; recycling conserves natural resources and energy, reduces pollution, and at the end of the day it makes sense from a cost standpoint."