AIM Environmental Group is a proud sponsor for the upcoming 2012 EcoFest Barrie. Along with the event’s goals and objectives, AIM is a strong proponent of environmental stewardship, sustainability and promoting the development of vibrant and flourishing communities.

Visit our media page to see Kyle Press from AIM explain how it works.

For more information about the treatment system or other inquiries, please contact us at: info@aimgroup.ca

PETER KENTER
correspondent

(Nov 23, 2011)
Kitchener continues to be a Canadian high-tech hub, so it’s no surprise that Facebook is planning a major presence a stone’s throw from the city’s downtown Google offices. The job of selective demolition and environmental abatement on the office site was awarded to the demolition unit of AIM Environmental Group of Stoney Creek, on behalf of client and project manager Zehr Kalman Levesque.

“The site consists of a block of buildings all interlocked, ranging from structures built in the 1930s up until the 1970s,” says Tony D’Angelo, general manager of operations with AIM. “What we were asked to do is to environmentally remediate the building and create three swaths right through the building, then prepare the structure for small outdoor courtyards that will be built inside the block of buildings. We also had to carve a lane way between buildings to access a new parking facility.”

The environmental remediation portion of the contract reflected the multiple uses of the building over 80 years.

“This building had 18 underground storage tanks. Some of them were empty, some of them were leaking and of those that were full, each of them had a different chemical inside them,” says D’Angelo. “That’s a considerable safety concern, because you can’t have a vac truck come in and begin to mix the chemicals as they’re being removed. Each tank has to be considered separately.”

Contaminated soil was removed and remediated. The company also removed asbestos fireproofing, PCB ballasts and mercury light bulbs.

The building hugs the sidewalk frequently used by pedestrians. A CN commercial/commuter rail line operates three metres away from one side of the property.

“Railway negotiations require very specific permitting,” says D’Angelo. “We would shut down the job at one end of the building during rail rush hour at about 7:00 in the morning, and shift work to another part of the building. We also hoarded off the sidewalk and temporarily redirected foot traffic across the street.”

The demolition began with the company’s latest equipment acquisition, a Volvo 460 high-reach demolition excavator with a 10-storey capability.

“Aaron Sterk, our estimator, and I had both sat in one at the National Demolition Association show in Las Vegas,” says D’Angelo. “This unit has all the bells and whistles from a fire hose to keep dust down, to a video camera for close-up shots, so the operator can observe work while nipping and shearing. It also has a quick-pin release that allows us to change tools in under an hour, instead of half a day, which is typical changeover time.”

AIM purchased the unit, realizing it would help them to pre-qualify for a considerable number of contracts. D’Angelo says the equipment helped them to net a contract requiring high-reach capabilities for NOVA Chemicals in Sarnia. The company’s high-reach was also recently used to demolish Hamilton’s Federal Building for developer Darko Vranich.

In Kitchener, the high-reach was used to remove HVAC and exhaust systems from the building’s roof and crane the demolition material safely to the ground in close quarters.

“We carefully planned the interior demolition sequence under engineering guidance and there was a lot of shoring and trussing involved to get the job done safely,” says Sterk. “Through some tricky maneuvering we were able to take an excavator through one of the arches and move it inside the building,”

The excavator carefully cut through steel, concrete block, fieldstone and quadruple-thick brick walls, carefully preserving the best materials for additional interior construction following the demolition exercise.

The job was completed safely in four months spanning the summer, with anywhere from five to 20 workers committed to the project at any one time.

“We haven’t lost a man-day through work-related injuries in more than 20 years,” says D’Angelo. “That record remains intact.”

View the full article here:
http://www.dcnonl.com/article/id47716/–remediation-key-for-facebookrsquos-new-kitchener-ontario-home

Guelph back in organic waste processing game

Tues, Sept 27 2011
Rob O’Flanagan

GUELPH — The City of Guelph is back in the organic waste processing
business, opening a new facility Tuesday that officials believe is the most technologically advanced of its kind in North America.

It will turn Guelph’s organic waste and that of the Region of Waterloo into what is touted as the cleanest compost possible, and will allow Guelph to control its own waste management destiny, officials said.

“I can say, with no exaggeration, that this is one of my proudest moments as mayor of the City of Guelph,” said Karen Farbridge Tuesday morning, speaking to the city officials, dignitaries, facility partners and workers who gathered at the facility for the grand opening.

“As of today, the organic waste that residents and businesses leave at the curb will be turned into clean, usable compost,” Farbridge continued. “As of today, Guelph is reclaiming its position as a waste management leader. And as of today, we’re once again taking care of our own organic waste in our own community.”

Guelph’s reputation as an organic waste management leader was disrupted and tarnished back in 2006, when what had been a respected organic recycling plant – one needing major renovations and upgrades – was shut down. For a time, organic waste was trucked to a landfill site and buried. Then it was trucked out of the community destined for an energy generating incinerator in New York State.

“We took great pride in being pioneers in organic waste management,” Farbridge said. “It was fundamental to our identity as a green community. This building is much more than a place to handle our organic waste. It’s a symbol of Guelph reclaiming its place as an environmental leader in this province.”

Looking from the inside like a large warehouse with a lot of empty floor space, the new $32,825,000 facility features seven processing tunnels – large, cavernous rooms with sophisticated aeration systems in the floors and watering systems in the ceilings.

The tunnels process organic matter through various stages, removing pathogens, moisture, odour and non-organic material until it becomes usable compost, with no use restrictions.

During the grand opening, the first truckload of green-bag wet waste was dumped on the clean concrete floor in the receiving area. That waste is scooped up by frontend loaders and run through a de-bagging process.

As it goes through the various stages of composting, the organic waste is filtered through progressively fine screens and then placed in a large maturation area until it is ready to be bagged and distributed to consumers such as gardening centers and farmers.

The facility will boost Guelph’s waste diversion rate by an additional 10 per cent, contributing significantly to the goal of 55 per cent waste diversion by 2012, Farbridge said.

The city has gained “significant expertise in waste management” in planning for and building the facility, she added, and that expertise can be promoted globally. The plant will also include an education room for sharing knowledge with visitors.

By having its own facility, Guelph maintains autonomy over its own waste management program, and has the capacity to accept waste from other municipalities, the mayor said. The community is “not at the whim of price increases from a processor in another municipality.”

The air filtration system is considered the most advanced available, with green technology filters and devices made in Guelph by Biorem. The facility features noise reduction and corrosion prevention technologies. Once cleaned, the odour-free air is vented through a 47.5 metre biofilter stack. Maple Reinders designed and built the facility.

The entire building has a membrane lining underneath it, which – in the event of a fluid spill – prevents waste material from escaping into the groundwater system. The facility is built on top of the source of Guelph’s drinking water. It had to meet about a dozen regulatory approvals before opening.

“When the former plant closed, it was a big blow to this community,” Farbridge said. “People were very disappointed that their green bags were going to be shipped to New York State to an incinerator.”

Residents were unequivocal about what they wanted. “They wanted to process our organic waste in our own municipality,” the mayor said. She added that some options for dealing with organic waste – burying, burning or shipping it elsewhere – are cheaper than composting it yourself.

“But Guelph city council rejected all of these options and made a commitment to a new organic waste processing facility,” she continued during her address. “And the reason is simple: It’s the responsible thing to do.”

The Organic Waste Processing Facility will be run by Aim Environment Group, a Maple Reinders partner. The plant will process Guelph’s wet waste as well as that of Waterloo Region, and may receive similar waste from other jurisdictions if it has the capacity to do so, and if the waste complies with strict regulations, Dean Wyman, general manager of solid waste resources said in an interview.

Aim Environmental will be paid $79 per tonne of material processed, Wyman explained. Guelph produces roughly 10,000 tonnes of organic waste per year. Another 20,000 tonnes annually will be trucked to the facility from the Region of Waterloo, commencing in roughly two weeks.

Aim Environmental has a contract with the Region of Waterloo which expires in October, 2013. At that time, an agreement between Guelph and the Region of Waterloo will kick in, one that will see the latter pay $117 per tonne for processing.

The Government of Canada kicked in $4.7 million for the project, funding coming from the Gas Tax Fund.

Meeting the most stringent approval guidelines in the field, the facility has complex technologies that are expected to keep all smells contained within the building, and prevent all waste water from finding its way into ground water.

Receiving doors have so-called air curtains that prevent odour from escaping when the doors are opened, Bill Shield, the city’s supervisor of governance and compliance explained during a presentation.

Guelph’s previous wet waste processing plant was closed in 2006 and the compostable matter was shipped to an energy-for-waste facility in New York State. That turn of events was a blow to the city’s reputation as a waste management/environmental leader, and replacing the old system has been a priority ever since.

During his remarks Wyman recalled Farbridge’s inaugural address in 2006, when she promised to reopen the organic plant.

“The mayor’s comments that night left me excited for the work to come, to make the promise to Guelph residents a reality,” Wyman said. “It’s taken a little longer than everyone originally thought, but I think that after you tour the facility today each of you will agree that it’s been well worth the wait.”

Wyman said the facility will restore the city to a position of environmental leadership and waste management practices.

John Haanstra, Maple Reinders senior vice president, said the facility will reduce the community’s carbon footprint while converting organic waste into a beneficial organic resource “for soil revitalization and enhancement.”

Locating the facility at the Guelph Waste Resource and Innovation Centre, he added, “maximizes operational and economic efficiency, and provides additional carbon footprint benefits.”

He added that the state-of-the-art plant is designed to “eliminate impact on the surrounding area, while producing the highest quality compost.”

Demolition of Hamilton’s Federal Building

Film courtesy of Hamilton Spectator

In February 2011, he had the chance to help build a bridge and house, along with other volunteers from Wells of Hope. At AIM, we continually encourage our employees to promote growth and relief support – locally and abroad.

Tony D’Angelo, Business Unit Manager (Demolition) will be featured in the The Record newspaper on Thursday, June 16.

Please keep an eye for our company feature!

Visitors to the site are provided with access to a virtual encyclopedia of knowledge and materials on AIM Environmental Group’s services. The site also offers online sign-up for AIM Environmental’s informative e-newsletter.

“Our objective was to make our site both deeper and easier to use than any in the industry,” says Jim Skeoch, Senior Sales Specialist, AIM Environmental Group, and response from customers who have been using the beta site suggests that we have succeeded.”

“The site is a further extension of our unsurpassed commitment to be the best in customer service.  It will never replace the personal touch completely but we hope it helps visitors learn more about our company. We are proud of what has been accomplished,” Skeoch added.

AIM’s Marketing and Communications Specialist, Justin Lim notes “We worked in tandem with Carbonated Interactive to get a custom site that allows for us as an organization to reach various industry groups and sectors.”

By Jeffrey Carter – freelance journalist based in Dresden jcarter@ciaccess.com

A 10-year study at the Harrow research station has been looking at urban carbon sources.

There’s an opportunity for cities to help revitalize Canada’s agricultural soils by supplying composted organic materials – things like food scraps, leaf litter and lawn clippings.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada soil scientists say that by applying an organic carbon source, even once or twice every 10 years, there can be positive impacts. There are yield gains and, with improved soil structure, nutrients are more likely to stay put.

Dr. Dan Reynold, Dr. Craig Drury and other soil scientists at the AAFC research station at Harrow are just wrapping up a 10-year study looking at the potential of organic carbon source from cities and other places.

“As soil quality degrades, farmers have been able to compensate by adding more and better fertilizers. That has worked from a yield aspect, but from an environmental aspect, we’ve ended up with more erosion, more leaching losses of nutrients into the tiles, drainage water and groundwater,” Reynolds says.

“The algae blooms, particularly in Lake Erie, they’re caused primarily by agricultural runoff.”

Reynolds and Drury say farmers have helped alleviate environmental concerns through conservation tillage practices. Unfortunately these do not adequately address the basic problem of soil structure as it relates to soil carbon.

They cite a long-term comparison between no-till and moldboard plowing in continuous corn at Eugene F. Whelan Research Farm in Essex County as evidence. The no-till plots at the Brookston clay site do tend to have higher levels of organic carbon on the soil surface. However, when the carbon content in the entire topsoil profile is measured, carbon levels in the two treatments were about the same.

To understand the situation, Reynolds says farmers should consider the state of undisturbed woodlots soils that once dominated the area and compare them to today’s farm fields.

The latter are often grey in colour and, after a summer dry spell, cracks reach deep into the soil profile. They also tend to have a high bulk density – a compacted nature – that requires heavy equipment to break them up.

Left in their natural wooded state, these soils contain far more organic carbon. The water-hold capacity and air capacity are greater. From a visual standpoint, they have a dark colour and crumbly consistency.

For agricultural purposes, Reynolds says the ideal situation lies somewhere between the two extremes.

With organic carbon, the content should be from three to five percent by weight of agricultural purposes – the sweet zone. That compares to six to seven per cent for woodlot soil and around two percent for today’s typical Brookston-clay soils under a corn-soybean-wheat rotation.

Organic carbon is the carbon portion of organic matter. To calculate the amount of organic matter in soil from the organic carbon level, multiple by factor of 1.72.

The challenge is to return organic carbon source to the soil. Reynolds and his associates have found there can be long-term benefits from just a single application.

Five different materials were compared including 75, 150 and 300 tonnes of composted household vegetable waste per hectare, 75 tonnes of composted yard waste and a mixture of 75 tonnes of composted pig manure and straw. These were fall-applied to plots of continuous corn at the Whelan Research Farm in 1998. Over the next nine years, physical and biological changes to the soil were recorded along with yields and other data.

Both chemically fertilized and unfertilized plots were examined.

Reynolds says continuous corn was chosen for the experiment in an attempt to isolate the impact of the compost from other factors – such as the benefits that may have been derived from a crop rotation.

In both the chemically fertilized plots there were yield advantages associated with the addition of compost from all the sources, Reynolds and Drury say.

Over the first five years of the experiment on plots receiving chemical fertilizers, average yield advantages ranged from 12 per cent with the pig manure/straw compost combination to an 18 per cent advantage with the 300 tonnes of composted food waste.

Interestingly, the pig manure/straw compost came out on top over 10 years on chemically fertilized plots with an average yield advantage of 14 per cent. The smallest, average 10-year yield advantage associated with a compost application was five per cent.

In the plots that received no chemical fertilizers, the yield advantage associated with compost was often much greater in the first few years. However all yields in the unfertilized plots were relatively low compared to those receiving chemical fertilizers, regardless of the application of compost.

“The findings are encouraging,” Drury says.

“We can start engineering soils (using compost). We don’t have to wait 50 years for benefits of wider rotations to kick in.”

Reynolds feels yield benefits from compost in the fertilized continuous corn plots can be primarily linked to the improved physical characteristics of the soil. There were also positive biological changes and compost provides a source of slow-release nutrients.

The use of compost is often associated with organic production but there are others who see a benefit.

In Chatham-Kent, for instance, Carl Sterling has been using a mix of composted cattle manure, wheat straw, soybean straw and food waste on his 120-acre home farm outside Paincourt. After spreading 11 to 22 tonnes per hectare over four years, he says his organic matter levels have been increased from about six to seven per cent or better and the ground has more tithe.

Sterling hopes to reduce or even eliminate his use of fertilizer over time.

For farmers without an adequate source of cattle manure, municipal organic waste could provide an answer.

The Composting Council of Canada surveyed 227 centralized composting facilities across Canada. In 2005, these produced nearly 2.5 million tonnes of compost using nearly four million tonnes of feedstock.

Yard waste, wood waste and animal manure were the most common materials composted but residential and commercial food wastes were also utilized.

In comparison, back in the early 1990′s, less than 300,000 tonnes of organic materials composted by centralized facilities.

There’s room for further growth.

Danielle Buklis, a project coordinator with the council, says the amount of municipal organic waste being composted could be tripled.

The market price of compost varies widely. Some municipalities sell it in bulk for as little as $5 per tonne while privately operated facilities often charges $20 to $30.

Reynolds says it’s unlikely to be a cost-effective measure, based on the amount of nutrients release to the first crop after application. However, when long-term benefits are considered, applying compost to farmland may be an economically viable option.

Dr. Rob Nurse and the rest of the team at Harrow are embarking upon a new study involving compost as a mulch and soil amendment for vegetables grown on Harrow sandy loam soil.

This article was originally published in the June 30th, 2009 edition of the Ontario Farmer Magazine.