CLEVELAND: The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority approved paying an Independence company $8.75 per cubic yard to trap and sell the sludge dredged from the Cuyahoga River.
Kurtz Bros Inc., a landscaping and waste management company, can keep 85 percent of the sale proceeds, and the port will get 15 percent, said port President William Friedman.”Kurtz is operating the site on our behalf and getting paid for their work,” Friedman said, adding the port will pay the company directly when the raw material comes in.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which dredges more than 200,000 cubic yards of sediment from the river bottom annually — and the AncelorMittal steel mill must pay to dump sludge in the port’s confined disposal facilities near Burke Lakefront Airport downtown. Those “tipping fees” will be used to pay Kurtz.
Friedman said he is unsure how much the sludge can be sold for, adding they won’t know the exact worth until the sediment is received, sorted, graded and actually sold. But he estimates the range will be $2 to $12 per ton.
The disposal of the sediment has caused legal rift between the state, the port and the U.S. Army Corps because the Corps wants to dump the sediment into Lake Erie.
Port officials and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency fear the sediment is too polluted with cancer-causing PCBs — a group of man-made organic chemicals — to dump in open water.
In addition to the dispute on where to put the sediment, the Corps was refusing to dredge a mile along the Cleveland Harbor and Cuyahoga River shipping channel, saying the sludge dredged from sixth mile — which serves ArcelorMittal’s steel mill — would be too polluted to dump in Lake Erie.
The Corps argues dumping in the lake is a cheaper alternative than using the port’s disposal facility.But a federal judge said Tuesday the Corps must fully dredge all 6 miles.
Instead of dumping in the lake, port officials approved the contract with Kurtz Bros, allowing the company to trap sediment, then sell it.
Board Chairman Chris Ronayne said there’s a “pretty sophisticated system” to trap the sediment. The trap is a 30-foot long trough at the bottom of the river located above the ship channel.
The sludge goes into the trap and gets sucked out, and another machine dries it and makes it possible to sell as fill. Officials estimate the trap — which will start within the next few days — will collect 15 to 20 percent of the sediment that needs to be dredged each year.
Friedman said the sediment can be used to build roads, do construction and make concrete.
He said the sediment will not be treated before it is sold but said when it is removed from the water and dried it is “simply sandy earth.”
“You can dig it, stack it, use it for fill, hike on it — as people do everyday at the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve — and drive heavy equipment on it,” Friedman said. “It’s basically just the runoff of dirt from your backyard that gets washed down the river then picked up from the bottom of the ship channel when dredging occurs.”
