Waste Site to Renewable Energy Industry - Redevopment Challenges

Ventower Industries (Ventower) constructed a 110,000 square-foot facility to manufacture steel towers for wind-powered electrical generators (wind turbines).  The 38-acre plant site was part of a larger industrial waste landfill created between the 1940s and 1970s to reclaim Lake Erie coastal marshes.  This project faced several challenges: management of environmental liabilities, protection of future workers, design of a foundation to support a large plant on unconsolidated wastes, and securing over $7,000,000 in brownfields financing to pay for the extra costs.  And the final challenge was to do it sustainably.  The multi-disciplinary solutions to these challenges are the subject of this presentation.

Environmental assessments of the property were conducted to support liability mitigation for the new owner and design of environmental response actions needed to allow safe use of the site.  Environmental response activities included installation of direct contact barriers across the entire site, installation of vapor intrusion barriers beneath the manufacturing and office buildings, management of excess fill generated during construction, and installation of detention pond liners.  The biggest construction challenge was geotechnical – how to create a foundation system that would support the high manufacturing loads on unconsolidated industrial fill and not penetrate an underlying clay stratum – was solved by using controlled modulus columns (CMCs) to stabilize the soil sufficiently to support the manufacturing building. A complex package of over $7,000,000 in brownfield redevelopment financing was assembled from federal, state and local sources.  Green remediation and other sustainable develop strategies were incorporated into the project.