Case Studies

Rivergate Scrap Metals

Rivergate Scrap Metals located in the northern part of Portland, Oregon operates a ten acre scrap metal recycling facility. The yard is located adjacent to Columbia Slough, an urban tributary to the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. Rivergate operates an automobile shredder that is supported by multiple cranes and grapples with magnets to maintain material separation and flow through the yard. Shred from the yard is processed then loaded to containers or railcars for export. Heavy and structural steel is handled in a separate area of the yard that includes a shear, baler and logger.

Rivergate implements rigorous Best Management Practices to minimize impacts of the recycling operation to the environment, to ensure a safe working environment and to streamline operations. BMPs include a well organized paved yard, roofing over the shredder off-feed conveyors, covered fluff and shred handling areas, yard sweeping, a state of the art stormwater treatment system, and a stormwater reuse system for shredder cooling.

In conjunction with their shredder installation, StormwateRx LLC engineers helped Rivergate implement a stormwater BMP treatment train. The upgraded stormwater treatment system includes a detention pond for coarse solids removal, an above-ground coalescing oil/water separator for oil removal, and an above ground Aquip® Enhanced Stormwater Filtration System for metals and nutrients removal. An underperforming cartridge stormwater filtration system was removed from service and retrofit for use as a pump station by StormwateRx design engineers.

With the combination of these stormwater BMPs, Rivergate has been able to bring their pollutant concentrations below the stringent industrial permit benchmarks for the Columbia Slough, see plot graph below.

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Case Studies

Rivergate Scrap Metals

Rivergate Scrap Metals, Portland, Oregon, sampling data over time: