Waste Management opted to power its new SENNEBOGEN 875 R-RD with an electric drive so environmental risks to Seattle’s Lower Duwamish Waterway would be minimized.
Seattle, WA – When Waste Management, North America’s leading provider of integrated environmental solutions, got involved with an ongoing environmental dredging and remediation project initiated by Boeing in Seattle’s Lower Duwamish Waterway, it was the first step in a new direction for the company.
“The Duwamish River dock site is a new type of facility for Waste Management,” says Nick Harbert, District Manager for Waste Management. “The long-term plan for the 16-acre site is to unload contaminated sediment from the river off barges, de-water it, and then load the solid material onto waiting railcars for transport to landfills.”
Waste Management officials knew they would need the right kind of equipment for the new dock application to meet the high productivity levels they had set for themselves. A purpose-built SENNEBOGEN material handler was deemed the solution, but company officials debated the merits of SENNEBOGEN 880 and 870 models and were torn between either a diesel or an electric-powered machine.
Due diligence lead to purchase of SENNEBOGEN 875 R-HD
“SENNEBOGEN LLC. arranged a trip to SENNEBOGEN headquarters in Germany for Waste Management officials to see various models of the purpose-built green machines in operation doing similar type applications,” says Harbert. “They liked what they saw and came back to North America convinced that SENNEBOGEN was the right machine for the Duwamish site.”
Harbert also says seeing a SENNEBOGEN 875 R-HD at the 2014 Con Expo Show in Las Vegas with John Meese, Senior Director of Heavy Equipment, and having the opportunity to have that conversation with him and Erich Sennebogen, tilted the decision in favour of the 875 material handler and the order was placed.
“The SENNEBOGEN 875 R-HD’s extended reach (K21, 68’7”) and its ability to handle a 6-yd. clamshell bucket were the key determining factors,” says Harbert. “We decided to go with the electrically-powered machine because we would be working on a river and wanted to minimize the potential risk of spills from the machine. We also wanted to hold ourselves to a higher environmental standard. Minimizing the noise level of operating the machine was a factor, too.”
Environmental hurdles and requirements necessitated change in 875 R-HD job application at Duwamish site
Unfortunately, environmental hurdles and requirements slowed development of the Duwamish site. “After Waste Management became the long-term tenants of the site in April 2014, we were unable to begin construction of railroad tracks as there still had to be more site assessment work done by the state environmental regulatory agency,” says Harbert. “As a result, the Boeing material could not come to the Duwamish site and it had to be processed at a third-party facility on the river.”
The good news is that Waste Management’s SENNEBOGEN 875 R-HD has been put to productive use in the meantime.
“While we wait for the necessary approvals, what is happening at our Duwamish site now is the off-loading of clean back-fill material from trucks onto barges to be taken to fill in the holes left by the dredging,” says Harbert. “Our SENNEBOGEN 875 R-HD has been phenomenally efficient and productive in this operation, cutting barge-loading times significantly. Whereas, it had previously taken operators 4 to 5 hours to load a barge with back-fill material, our SENNEBOGEN was able to do the same operation in two hours. During an evaluation meeting, company officials made it very clear that they would not have been able to meet their contractual obligations without the aid of our facility and our SENNEBOGEN material handler.”
Harbert says his operators are very happy with the simplicity, performance and the responsiveness of the SENNEBOGEN 875 R-HD machine, joking that other contractors experienced “green envy” when they witnessed Waste Management’s material handler in operation at the Duwamish site. “They wanted to get one of these machines,” he says. “It has definitely been a great asset to our operation.”
Duwamish River dredging and remediation a long-term project
The dredging and remediation of the Duwamish River will continue for many more years. The river is an EPA-managed Superfund site with plans to move over 1 million cubic yards of contaminated dredge sediment over the next several years. Harbert says Waste Management’s Duwamish site will be fully operational within a year or so and will be very much a part of that ongoing remediation project. He says the company is also bidding on similar dredge operations elsewhere.