Scenario: select asbestos-containing material (ACM) to be left in exist. bldg (and is allowed to be) and will be handled during demolition. If it is not selectively/carefully demo'd, the ACM could contaminate more construction waste than it should. However, once it is "tainted" with hazardous material it would not be required to be part of the LEED calculations and would be taken to a landfill that accepts haz. waste. Has anyone had any issues with the reviewer questioning the amount of "clean" waste that is left to use in the calculations? My feeling is, letting too much waste get contaminated, and thus excluded from the overall calcs, does not meet the Intent of the credit - diverting waste from landfill. Abatement of this remaining ACM is cost-prohibitive, so we are trying to be as clear as possible to contractor, etc how to handle demo of the building, without adding cost to the budget. Would love to hear about anybody else's experience when it came to ACM and demolition.
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Renee Shirey
Stantec422 thumbs up
June 1, 2011 - 5:48 pm
Further clarification - the ACM is considered Category 1 non-friable, if that makes a difference.
Renee Shirey
Stantec422 thumbs up
June 10, 2011 - 9:36 am
Anyone have any thoughts? I am also questioning if the non-friable material WOULD be included in the const waste total, or if I can safely NOT count is as part of the waste total. This could drastically effect our success or failure of this credit and would not be something that could be fixed later.
Jennifer Frey
(old outdated email address)61 thumbs up
June 10, 2011 - 12:01 pm
Answer to the June 10 question: Your non-friable material would not count in your construction waste total and neither would material coated with lead-based paint. They are considered hazardous materials and I have always excluded them from calculations.
Answer to the May 31 question: This is difficult. If the local authorities will allow work in the space around the non-friable ACM, then I would suggest your GC/demolition subcontractor create a work plan to remove as much of the "clean" material as possible without disturbing the ACM and provide an alternate cost proposal. Then upon removal of ACM the amount of "clean" materal contaminated will be less than if they just crushed it together and hauled the now hazardous material to the landfill. Depending on your region and economy this selective demolition may be more or less expensive than ACM abatement.
Recommendations:
In the future some ways to avoid this scenario might be to 1) make the Owner aware and responsible for abatement prior to demolition sequence, and 2) add langauge to Architect's specification, or GC's bid instructions and GC's demolition subcontracts: that either require abatement prior to demo or requires selective demolition prior to removal of ACM or lead-based paint (another material that creates a similar situation).
Note that without these controls, if a project specification or bid instruction/contract were to require the demolition contractor achieve a specific high waste diversion rate (i.e. 75% or 95%) it makes incentive for the demo subs to take all the heavy high dollar value recyclables out and then crush all the clean small/comingled material with the ACM or lead-based paint material so their numbers come out near perfect- not meeting the intent of the credit. I have seen this becoming a trend, so make sure there are proper safe-guards so the incentive will be to meet the credit intent.
Hopefully you will find some selective demolition that is within your budget to give you as much recyclable tonnage before it gets contaminated and is no longer required to be counted in LEED.
Good luck!
Nicholas Olechnowicz
Senior Project ManagerIntertek
25 thumbs up
August 25, 2011 - 11:17 am
-Has anyone officially asked for a formal clarification from USGBC on this matter. We have numerous projects where the owner does not have the funding to fully abate a building, just to demolish it.
Stantec IP - Dupe - Do not use
1 thumbs up
March 11, 2013 - 5:31 pm
I am wondering if anybody has any other follow up on this.
Per Jennifer Frey's comment "Note that without these controls, if a project specification or bid instruction/contract were to require the demolition contractor achieve a specific high waste diversion rate (i.e. 75% or 95%) it makes incentive for the demo subs to take all the heavy high dollar value recyclables out and then crush all the clean small/comingled material with the ACM or lead-based paint material so their numbers come out near perfect- not meeting the intent of the credit. I have seen this becoming a trend, so make sure there are proper safe-guards so the incentive will be to meet the credit intent."
Has anyone had the credit rejected or questioned because of this (unintended) approach? Nicholas, have you had any feedback when having your projects reviewed?
RETIRED
LEEDuser Expert
623 thumbs up
March 11, 2013 - 6:43 pm
I do not have experience with this specific situation and hope that the LEEDuser community will chime in to help. However, I would say that the cost of disposing waste as contaminated is much more than disposing of non-regulated waste. I would be surprised if contractors took this route if the cost impact were too high.