FDR Stretches Fairfield County’s Taxpayer Dollars

Fairfield County, South Carolina, maintains more than 400 unpaved, dirt and gravel roadways totaling approximately 250 miles. Like many rural counties, Fairfield has a limited budget. Transportation Committee Chairman James McGraw III formed a collaborative team of citizens, county staff, and private consultants to implement a paving program that would provide adequate roads for transportation while utilizing tax payers’ dollars in the most efficient manner.

In addition to the costs surrounding the maintenance of the roads, the citizens faced dust, debris, and other problems associated with unpaved surfaces. These issues range from the inability to operate school buses as well as emergency and postal vehicles during inclement weather due to the washboard effect - a pattern of traverse ruts and erosion, produced by vehicular traffic. McGraw’s team collaborated and agreed that full-depth reclamation (FDR) with portland cement, designed by Dennis Corporation, would be the most beneficial technology to solve these problems and ensure a better quality of life for Fairfield County residents.

By using this process, the county could upgrade 2.5 miles of road for every 1 miles of asphalt pavement, at the same price – a cost savings of approximately $110,000 per mile.

In recognition of his efforts to promote sustainable development through the use of concrete- and cement-based products, McGraw was a recipient of the 2009 PCA Sustainable Leadership Awards (see below).

Webinar Discusses Recent Changes to Cement Specifications

PCA will offer the webinar "Recent Changes to Cement Specifications” on October 13, 12 - 1 pm CDT. The session will guide attendees through a review of 2009 revisions to ASTM C150 and AASHTO M85, Standard Specifications for Portland Cement. Detailed changes include:

> Provisions for a new cement type—Type II(MH)
> Requirements for cements incorporating inorganic processing additions
> New fineness requirements
> Revisions to sulfate content provisions
> New reporting requirements for cement mill test reports

In addition, ASTM C595, Standard Specification for Blended Cements, and C1157, Standard Performance Specification for Hydraulic Cement, have also been revised. The approved changes to these two specifications include provisions for a new Type IT (ternary) blended cement.

The cost is $35.
More information and purchase.

U.S. DOE Selects CEMEX to Develop Carbon Capturing Technology

CEMEX Inc., announced last week that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected it to develop technology for capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions at one of CEMEX’s U.S. cement plants.

CEMEX will work with RTI International and others to design a dry sorbent CO2 capture and compression system, a pipeline (if necessary), and an injection station. This commercial-scale Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) demonstration project may remove up to 1 million tons of CO2 annually.

Only 12 CCS projects from industrial sources, including cement plants, chemical plants, paper mills, refineries, and manufacturing facilities across the United States were selected for the first phase of DOE funding.

The CCS projects are a cost-shared collaboration between the government and private industry to increase investment in clean industrial technologies and sequestration projects. The DOE will provide $1.14 million and CEMEX USA will provide 20 percent of the funding for Phase I of its project.

Webcast to Discuss High Performance Building Requirements

PCA will present a free webcast on its High Performance Building Requirements for Sustainability on October 22, 11-noon CDT. During "Sustainability in High Performance Buildings" Steve Szoke, PCA's director codes and standards, will discuss how PCA is leading the way towards new standards in sustainability that promise safer, more secure and more energy-efficient buildings for future generations.

Sustainability isn't just about good energy performance: It is also about saving taxpayer dollars, safety, property protection, security, aesthetics and community issues.

A white paper on the topic will also be available for download.
More information and to register

New Cement Use Reports Available

PCA has released a new series of reports on the apparent use of portland cement. The reports track cement usage in 2008 by market group on the state, county, and metro area level.

The new reports include:
> The 2008 Apparent Use of Portland Cement by County and Market Group report provides consumption on a state by county basis for each of the 12 major construction market groupings.  Also includes a rare look at estimated masonry cement shipments by county.

> The 2008 Apparent Use of Portland Cement by State and Market report estimates portland cement consumption in 49 construction classifications for 56 state and partial-state geographic areas.  These classifications come from major market groups: Building construction, public works, and non-construction.

> The 2008 Apparent Use of Portland Cement by Top-50 Metro Areas and Market report the same 49 construction classifications as in the state and market report, but for metro areas.  Get data that paints a clear picture of portland cement consumption for the top-50 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).

Also available are projection updates for the current Portland Cement Trend Analysis by County reports.  This is available to those who have purchased the reports this year at no additional cost.

PCA’s Web site includes a complete list of reports and sample reports.
For more information please visit www.cement.org/market
Contact Nihab Maradkel

First Sustainable Development Leadership Award Presented

The first 2009 PCA Sustainable Leadership awards was presented last week to James McGraw III, chairman, Fairfield County Transportation Committee in Rion, S.C. (See Project of the Week above).

As a major tenet in its ongoing commitment to green building and excellence in leadership, the PCA Sustainable Leadership Awards recognize local leaders in six cities who have enacted policies or completed projects that promote sustainable development through the use of concrete- and cement-based products.

Joe O’Grady, Portland Cement Association, South East Region, presented the award at the 7th Annual South Carolina “Count on Concrete” Conference on October 7 in West Columbia, S.C.

The next scheduled presentation will be October 15 when Brian McCarthy, PCA president and CEO, presents an award to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter at Delaware Valley Green Building Council’s "BuildGreen 2009" conference.
More at www.cement.org/newsroom

PCA Social Media Activities Honored

The Construction Writer’s Association (CWA) recognized PCA’s social media activities, specifically its use of Twitter, as the winner of the “Electronic Communications”  category of the CWA Web site and Electronic Communications Awards . The activity was praised for its use of the new media realm to convey a broad range of messages about the industry, including the uses and benefits of concrete and cement-based products in sustainable design.

The award was presented at the association’s mid-year meeting held last week in Chicago.

The Construction Writer’s Association is a non-profit, non-partisan, international organization for professional journalists, writers, editors, and publicists serving the information needs of the construction industry.

PCA’s Twitter activities have yielded new and unique relationships and connections. In February 2009, a New York Times science reporter included Twitter as part of his pre-World of Concrete research and interviewed a PCA staff member and member companies for “Concrete: The Remix” (March 30, 2009).  At the same show, staff was interviewed for an Engineering News-Record blog on the use of Twitter.  @ConcreteThinker currently has more than 1,100 followers.
Follow PCA on Twitter
Contact Patti Flesher

Call for Abstracts: Solidification/Stabilization Workshop

Abstracts are invited and due by October 31, for the Solidification/Stabilization Technology Workshop to be presented in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, June 15-17, 2010.

The three-day conference will bring together international experts, regulators, and practitioners in remediation to discuss the state of practices, regulations, and the Canadian experience and to present cases studies where S/S remediation technology is being proposed or applied. 

The conference includes a site visit to the Sydney Tar Ponds and Coke Ovens site, Canada’s largest contaminated site clean-up project, and adjacent to the conference venue.
Contact Colin Dickson