Once crushed,
it's ready to rock

Where does all that old asphalt and concrete go after it's ripped up? And what happens to it?

In the Duluth area, at least, it is put to good use. Much of it is recycled at a site just off Garfield Avenue, at Northland Pier.

Highway "demo" is trucked to the waterfront, where it is piled, crushed and then added back into a bituminous mix for new road construction.

Additional aggregate is delivered to Northland Pier via vessel. Northland Constructors uses lake transportation to receive several shiploads of limestone annually from Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Northland Pier itself is a model of recycling. A flat piece of land on Rice's Point lying between the Cargill and AGP Grain elevators, the development site formerly owned by the Port Authority was brought to life in 1994 by Northland Constructors' Jim Holmgren. He bought the 38-acre site with two goals in mind. One was construction of a "hot mix" plant, which established the contractor as an aggregate wholesaler and concrete recycling center for residential, light industrial and commercial contractors.

Simultaneously, Mr. Holmgren acquired the floating equipment from one of the Port's oldest entities, Zenith Dredge Co., and renamed it Marine Tech of Duluth. He located both the dredge company and his Northland Bituminous Company onto the Dakota Pier property and renamed the site Northland Pier.

In its heyday, Zenith Dredge had been a major presence in the Twin Ports harbor. It built ships and helped create the St. Lawrence Seaway and over the years added to its legacy by preparing sites for the Duluth Arena Auditorium, the Clure Public Marine Terminal, the Burlington Northern Taconite Facility, Barkers Island, the Cargill elevators, the Two Harbors Breakwater and the Erie Pier confined disposal facility for dredged materials.

Zenith Dredge was about to go out of business, though, when its marine construction and dredging equipment were sold to Mr. Holmgren, who serves as Marine Tech's president. Mr. Holmgren felt the acquisition of the 90-year-old waterfront icon was a nice complement to his land-based construction business, allowing a local business to retain a dredging presence in the Duluth-Superior Harbor. Keeping a dredging firm local helps keep area dredging costs competitive.

Vice president of operations for Marine Tech is L. Keith Yetter, widely known in the dredging industry through his 37 years with Zenith Dredge.

"We still offer the same services as Zenith did for 90 years, with marine and dredging construction the primary business of Marine Tech," said Mr. Yetter.

As vice president of Marine Tech, Mr. Yetter has supervised the construction of a new Silver Bay Harbor of Refuge, Duluth- Superior Harbor maintenance dredging, an Environmental Protection Agency water lab project and a retrofit project at the Superior entry that involved 500 feet of new double-wall steel sheet piling.

Marine Tech uses its crane barge - renamed by Mr. Holmgren as the B. Yetter - for maintenance of harbor navigation channels. The dredged material is often deposited at Duluth's Erie Pier and processed by the Port Authority for sale, yet another example of waterfront recycling.