The year of 2012 brought Hurricane Sandy, in which AshBritt was activated as the prime contractor in 60 jurisdictions in the north east. In total for this effort, we cleared, processed, hauled and disposed of approximately 3,171,000 million cubic yards of debris for all clients. Though the majority of response operations for this event focused on debris, AshBritt also provided ancillary service support to the State by retrieving, hauling, and disposing over sunken and abandoned vessels on both dry land and in New Jerseys waterways.
Specifically for our contract with the State of New Jersey, we were activated by the state and 53 municipalities covering 1800 square miles of contracted geographic area.  AshBritt identified and designated collection zones in each municipal jurisdiction. We sourced, retained and assigned subcontractors for all collection zones. We developed, staffed and operated 42 TDSR sites throughout the affected areas and collected and hauled over 3,000,000 CY of debris in 90 days. AshBritt hauled 64,891 loads of debris, using approximately 1,755 certified operational vehicles. We employed and managed 94 subcontractors, 70 of which were domiciled in NJ. To remove the 5,000 hazardous trees and 45,000 dangerous hanging limbs, 36 tree crews were deployed. There were numerous special debris waste streams encountered on this project. Though AshBritt had past experience in handling all of the debris streams, this was most diverse in terms combined tasks for special debris waste under one contract. Utilizing our household hazardous waste (HHW) crews, we removed and disposed 2,900 drums (55gal) of HHW. 5,000 of the 20,000 white goods units that we collected, hauled and processed contained Freon – which we removed, using appropriate, licensed personnel. 60 tons of e-waste debris was delivered to local recycling centers by our crews.  Multiple sand screening machines were engaged to screen 200,000 cubic yards of sand that was washed into the public streets from the beaches. We located, established and operated a vessel aggregation area for the 42 sunken or submerged vessels recovered by AshBritt.
The State of New Jersey elected to cooperatively procure from an existing, competitively bid, debris management contract between the State of Connecticut and AshBritt. Without the benefit of long term pre-planning, AshBritt encountered two significant challenges which are detailed below.
The state of NJ requires all companies that transport non-recyclable waste to have a state issued A-901 license. The process to obtain this license under normal conditions typically takes 6-9 months. The application and supporting documents, which included but are not limited to, corporate information and financial documents, personal history documents, personal financials, etc., – totaling over 1000 pages – were compiled by AshBritt and submitted to the state within 5 days. License approval was granted 2 days after. Personal information provided in this license application is to the level of detail similar to that requested in the US Office of Personnel Management’s Standard Form 86 for individual’s to receive a U.S. Government security clearance for national security positions. This process requires the absolute integrity of all hauling vehicles, by connecting the following items: the owner, the vehicle, the VIN #, the license plate, the state issued, the state owned, and the decal. This prevented both unauthorized tiering by subcontractors and undocumented subcontractors working on the contract. Decals issued by the state are required to be recovered and returned to the state. To ensure compliance, AshBritt utilized performance based subcontracts, in which payments would be withheld for a subcontractor that failed to turn in the decal upon job completion.
Though we explored various beneficial reuse applications through land applications in order to minimize disposal costs, it was ultimately required for AshBritt to utilize New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection recycling facilities permitted to accept wood grindings (or mulch material).  The permitted facilities in close proximity to the harder impacted areas along the coastline quickly filled to capacity within the first 30 days after the event impact.  The disposal locations were determined by the municipalities. AshBritt was able to successfully present to municipalities the lowest cost option recommendations to other outlets, with the least amount of cost impact, without having any impact to TDSR site operations.
Quality service is the key to AshBritt’s success. The different jurisdictions in the State of New Jersey required a trusted partner in its time of need; this partner is AshBritt