An Example of Resilience Thinking


The project I told you about in May of 2012 was to develop a process to solve a complex problem involving a natural system of the restored Cuyahoga River, the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Port Authority’s responsibility for managing the disposal of sediment dredged from the river, and the community’s obligation to pay the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for dredging the material in the first place plus building more combined disposal facilities (CDFs) to store it – a cost of tens of millions of dollars. 

The Port saw an opportunity to put these problems together into one solution process, since each stakeholder was somehow connected to the sediment.  To solve all their problems at once would mean that the River would stay healthy, the Port would manage the disposal well and the community would pay less or have more benefit. 

The Port began investigating options related to harvesting sediment from the moving water upstream from the ship channel.  The idea was that if the sediment didn’t get to the channel, it wouldn’t need to be dredged, saving the cost of dredging and storage.  The conditions of the combined problem would be solved, as long as the amount of sediment collected did not exceed the requirements of the River for some remaining sediment.

A new complex problem emerged[1] involving new stakeholders.  Who could harvest the sediment from running water[2]?  How would they do it?  If it’s not going to the CDFs where will it go? What would the stakeholders need, once we know who they are?  How much would it cost?

The Port investigated and through their network located a professor at the University of Akron who, with his students, began testing the sediment, asked the EPA for guidance and kept them informed, found there was technology and equipment already invented for such sediment collection (The patents were held by Ohio businesses.), found there were processes already developed to clean the sediment of toxicity if needed, and found a property along the river that was suitable for a collection site and gained agreement from the owner to conduct the tests there.

It’s at this point that my students and I began our work.  Our contact at the Port, Jim White, Director of Sustainable Infrastructure, told us several ideas he had for potential uses for the sediment.  Jim had been a River Navigator for the American Heritage Rivers, a County Administrator in Maryland, and a fellow who studied with Lewis Mumford, so his way of thinking is systemic and wide-ranging.  Some of his ideas were extending beaches of the Lake Erie islands, restoring brownfields or  filling in basements of demolished homes (most difficult of all, and therefore the Holy Grail). 

Our role was to ascertain the economics and logistics of harvesting and using the sediment.  Here’s what we found[3].  The EPA has ruled the sediment clean enough for residential use.  The sediment particle sizes lend themselves to several uses:  infill, beach extenders, cement mixing and breaking up clay in your garden.  Using the prices currently in effect for landfill and the quantity of sediment anticipated to be collectible from the River, the plan for filling in basements is affordable. 

Another outcome is that with this plan, the Port has more options for dredging the ship channel.  The first option is that since there will be less sediment coming into the ship channel, the Corps could dredge less, saving the cost of dredging and storage of sediment.  Another option would be to dredge the same amount, but deepen the channel so ships could carry larger loads (making them sit lower in the water). 

The current status of the project is that the University of Akron is conducting ongoing toxicology tests (Everything’s consistently clean.) and is developing a model to predict yield in total and by grain size (since different grain sizes are used for different purposes). 


[1] One way you know if a solution is a good one is if the problems that emerge from it are better than the problems you used to have, such as when you were broke (not knowing how to pay for anything) and then receiving a windfall of money and having to figure out what all you were going to do with it.
[2] It’s called the “water column.”
[3] Altogether there were five teams of JCU MBA students who did the analysis and development of the business case for a sustainable market for beneficial use of sediment from the Cuyahoga River.

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