In 2004, after Ivan the Terrible made landfall on the Gulf Coast between Mobile, AL and Pensacola, FL as a strong category 3 hurricane, I joined others in assisting in the cleanup in and around Pensacola. I couldn't believe the height that the tree debris was piled up on both sides of street after street as far as the eye could see. On some streets, I couldn't even see residents' homes behind the debris because it was piled so high. After Katrina, the sheer number and height of the piles of tree debris placed in open areas of New Orleans, such as in school football fields, was astounding. When I saw the damage done to trees in and around Houma after Gustav, there was no doubt that the same phenomenon of piling of debris was about happen once again (see above photo). I told some of my friends, watch how much debris gets piled on the streets in Houma, Thibodaux, and other severely affected areas. This leads to the question, "Where does all of this debris ultimately end up? Unfortunately, for the most part, no good use is made of it. Most of it is either burned up or removed out of the public eye to decompose. It is fitting that Biomass Magazine this month has a lead article that addresses this very issue, discussing the possible conversion of debris left behind by catastrophic events to more useful products. Detractors of biomass bring up energy costs associated with growing and harvesting biomass crops to convert to biofuels or to burn for electricity. In the case of debris, we have a readily available biomass source that is already sitting on the side of the road, waiting to be picked up and utilized, if we had appropriate infrastructure in place to deal with it. Another article in Biomass Magazine discusses a venture at Raceland Raw Sugars (a sugarcane milling operation located between Houma and New Orleans) to produce briquettes from excess sugarcane bagasse. Both articles directly address the all-important issue of transportion costs that currently prevents the utilization of potentially valuable biomass products that currently largely go to waste.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Making better use of disaster debris
In 2004, after Ivan the Terrible made landfall on the Gulf Coast between Mobile, AL and Pensacola, FL as a strong category 3 hurricane, I joined others in assisting in the cleanup in and around Pensacola. I couldn't believe the height that the tree debris was piled up on both sides of street after street as far as the eye could see. On some streets, I couldn't even see residents' homes behind the debris because it was piled so high. After Katrina, the sheer number and height of the piles of tree debris placed in open areas of New Orleans, such as in school football fields, was astounding. When I saw the damage done to trees in and around Houma after Gustav, there was no doubt that the same phenomenon of piling of debris was about happen once again (see above photo). I told some of my friends, watch how much debris gets piled on the streets in Houma, Thibodaux, and other severely affected areas. This leads to the question, "Where does all of this debris ultimately end up? Unfortunately, for the most part, no good use is made of it. Most of it is either burned up or removed out of the public eye to decompose. It is fitting that Biomass Magazine this month has a lead article that addresses this very issue, discussing the possible conversion of debris left behind by catastrophic events to more useful products. Detractors of biomass bring up energy costs associated with growing and harvesting biomass crops to convert to biofuels or to burn for electricity. In the case of debris, we have a readily available biomass source that is already sitting on the side of the road, waiting to be picked up and utilized, if we had appropriate infrastructure in place to deal with it. Another article in Biomass Magazine discusses a venture at Raceland Raw Sugars (a sugarcane milling operation located between Houma and New Orleans) to produce briquettes from excess sugarcane bagasse. Both articles directly address the all-important issue of transportion costs that currently prevents the utilization of potentially valuable biomass products that currently largely go to waste.
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1 comment:
Wow, it's disappointing to learn that so much goes to waste. We just learned that of all the glass we put in our curbside recycling bins, only about 30% ends up recycled because a lot of the bottles break, etc. I think it's great that more attention is going towards these types of things, and that you're bringing it up! It's ridiculous to throw away what can be reused.
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