The Ultimate Recycling

An essential part of keeping a Lake Erie port operating is dredging shipping lanes to maintain adequate depth for water traffic, whether that’s small fishing boats or large freighters. But what to do with the material that gets scooped up from the bottom of the lake? In many cases, it’s dumped in open lake waters, or impounded in lots near the harbor. But Dr. Elizabeth Dayton, Research Scientist at Ohio State University’s School of Environment & Natural Resources, believes the dredge material can be put to better use.

Dayton and her collaborator, Dr. Joseph Fiksel, Executive Director of Ohio State’s Center for Resilience, are investigating the economic feasibility of using dredge material in soil blending, a process that creates custom soil materials for a variety of applications. “We’ll look at developing soil blends that can be used in horticulture, landscaping, and maybe by the highway department as a beneficial reuse for dredge material,” says Dayton, who has previously studied reuse of other soil materials, such as spent foundry sand used in metal casting.