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Education:
The Key To Asphalt Rubber Success
A unique and forward-reaching
initiative launched by the County of Los Angeles and the California
Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) nearly two years ago
is reaping remarkable rewards for California communities - large
and small.
Just a few
months shy of its second anniversary, the County of Los Angeles
Rubberized Asphalt Concrete Technology Center (RACTC) is helping
cities and counties throughout California save money, recycle
tires and enjoy the benefits of longer lasting, quiet-riding pavements.
Since its launch
the Center, whose mission is to promote the use of crumb rubber
from scrap tires in roadway rehabilitation projects, has distributed
more than 4,500 informational brochures, and over 3,000 technical
workbooks. It also established a website that will soon log over
10,000 hits and answered more than 1,000 inquiries on its statewide
hotline.
Takin' it
to the streets
In addition, the Center has put together a "road show" that's
been playing to packed houses around the state and getting rave
reviews regionally and locally.
In the past
year, more than 300 city and county highway agency representatives
attended the Center's five regional workshops while over 635 highway
agency representatives participated in 17 local workshop programs.
"The workshops
have been very popular" Lynn D. Nicholson, program director
for the Rubberized Asphalt Technology Center said. "There's
been a real information gap in the local communities but the word
is out now... cities and counties are realizing we're here,"
he said.
As a result
of the Center's outreach efforts, the Santa Clara County Board
of Supervisors passed an ordinance last year requiring the highway
department to consider the use of asphalt rubber on all county
road projects. Under the ordinance, the highway department can
consider alternate bids that are less than 20 percent higher in
cost than conventional asphalt concrete.
Santa Clara
County is also taking the message beyond its borders and has entered
into discussions with neighboring Contra Costa and Alameda counties
about collaborating on blending unit purchases and other resource
sharing programs. In addition to the workshops, the Center has
taken its message to nearly 10,000 city and county highway officials
through informational displays and presentations at more than
13 major conferences in the state in the last year and a half.
The Center, a collaborative effort of the County of Los Angeles
and the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB),
receives $500,000 annually from CIWMB for its programs. The money
is derived from the state's waste tire fund which receives its
revenues from a 25 cent per tire fee on the retail sale of passenger
tires in the state. To date, RACTC has disbursed $1 million in
direct reimbursements to city and county agencies through incentive
and outreach programs.
"We established
the Center to help cities and counties overcome informational,
technical, and operational barriers to this market," CIWMB
member Steve Jones said. "We're trying to promote markets,
not underwrite them," Jones said. To that end, the CIWMB asked
the Center to identify what cities and counties needed to ensure
successful projects.
"We've found
that most of the local agencies lacked either the staff or the
funds or both, to do preliminary engineering on projects,"
Nicholson said. City and county agencies also lacked the quality
assurance / quality control programs they needed to ensure satisfactory
results, Nicholson said. The Center set up two incentive programs
to address these needs.
Incentives
encourage initial use
Using a $150,000 allocation from CIWMB, the Center established
a Roadway Deflection Testing program through which agencies can
apply for up to $5,000 per project to do deflection testing. Under
the program, the Center's staff will work with local project engineers
to determine what the thickness of the overlay should be and whether
asphalt rubber can be used at a reduced thickness. "We hope
to do about 30 projects under the deflective testing program this
year," Nicholson said.
Another area
the Center has been concentrating on in the last year is quality
control. "If you start with a good product - manufactured properly
- you're going to have a good result," Nicholson said. To insure
quality, the Center has designed an incentive plan aimed at helping
cities and counties do plant and job site inspections. "Inspections
is the key to quality," Nicholson said.
The CIWMB has
allocated $200,000 to the Center to reimburse local agencies for
plant inspection and job site inspection of rubberized asphalt
concrete (RAC) construction projects. To date, more than $40,000
has been distributed to cities and counties for inspections, Nicholson
said. The Center pays the city and county agencies a $1.00 per
ton of RAC up to $10,000 per project to cover the cost of plant
inspections as well as the cost of an inspector at the job site
to check site conditions and assure the final product is in accordance
with specifications. The Center's personnel are also available
to work with plant managers to help develop checklists of what
to look for at the plant and at the job site. For example, aggregate
gradation, asphalt content, crumb rubber content and temperature
of the mix are especially important with RAC, Nicholson said.
This summer,
RACTC plans to add a field inspector's guidebook to the inspection
program. The guidebook specifically focuses on asphalt rubber
and contains a checklist of things inspectors should do as well
as a list of the things they have to do to ensure successful projects.
Once complete, copies of the field inspector's guidebook will
be distributed to each road agency in the state, Nicholson said.
The Center will also begin offering inspection training courses
this summer to city and county agencies at no charge. "Knowledgeable
RAC inspectors are really needed in the industry," Nicholson
said. "Trained inspectors can help contractors and road agencies
reduce their risks," he said.
Nicholson believes
the availability of trained personnel will be an added incentive
for agencies to undertake the initial use of rubberized asphalt
concrete. "Once agencies do one job, others will follow,"
he said. Based on the success of the Center's programs, Nicholson
recently recommended the Board establish a Northern California
Technical Center to serve communities in the northern parts of
the state. Nicholson also recommended the Board approve an additional
four year's of funding for RACTC.
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