It’s called a trommel screener, and it sorts the stones and dirt from the sticks from the trash.
“We’re taking stuff that used to be landfilled or dumped in low land areas and making it useful again,” said Brad Letourneau, stormwater utility foreman for the city of Blaine.
The sticks and leaves will get sent to compost, the trash get sorted of and thrown away, and the dirt and rocks get reused right here in Blaine.
“It gets incorporates in other street projects like roads and driveways,” said Letourneau.
Last year was the first year the city had the screener, and it was able to remove about 1,800 cubic yard of screened material before headed to the landfill.
As the crew pulled trash out of the sorted material, there were papers and masks, but over time they have found all sorts of things coming through street sweepers
“Once I saw a toupee,” said Letourneau. “There’s a lot of stuff you just generally see laying in the streets – pop bottles, and stuff that people just throw out their windows unknowing that eventually someone has to come along and pick that stuff up.”
And as they clean it up, this sorting has a cascade of benefits.
“It helps makes our landfills life longer, and being able to remove the sand and the grit and the concrete material and having that go back in [to construction projects] reduces need to be mining those materials out of our natural resources,” said Rebecca Haug, Blaine’s water resources manager.”
That 1,800 yards of just screened materials the trommel screener sorted through last year would be enough to cover a football field at a depth of one foot. That material avoided the landfill and was put to use in construction projects.
