Frank Roethel runs his hands along the boathouse’s interior walls.
The exposed brick is smooth and cool to the touch; in contrast to the outside cratered from nearly 30 years of wind, rain and snow.
Roethel, director of the Waste Reduction and Management Institute, is giving a look-over to the Boat House, located on the south campus of Stony Brook University at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.
Its construction in 1990 was innovative for the time, using a different kind of material that could be among today’s solutions for handling a large portion of the garbage that is burned into ash at waste-to-energy plants on Long Island.
“When you look at the impact of climate change, you realize that the third largest emitter of carbon into our atmosphere is the portland cement industry," Roethel said, which is used in most construction from buildings, to roads and bridges.
“After the US and China, Portland cement is number three,” he added, which is made by burning and grinding a mixture of limestone and clay (or shale) into a binding mixture of finely ground powder.
Roethel is the lead author on a state-funded study on the future of waste management in the region. His deadline is rapidly approaching because the Brookhaven Landfill, one of two remaining landfill facilities on Long Island, is scheduled to begin the limit of the trash it accepts by the end of 2024, and close a few years later as capacity is reached.
The boathouse is built using around 14,000 bricks made from an ash mixture — byproducts of 350 tons of combusted municipal solid waste, which Roethel said represented at the time the amount of ash that would be produced by the Town of Brookhaven in a single day.
The challenge Long Island is faced with is diverting a thousand times that amount of ash waste when the landfill closes. “We have 340,000 tons to worry about, and really just that's going to the Brookhaven Landfill, not to mention what's going to Babylon,” Roethel said, in addition to more than 1.4 million tons that is sent out of state each year.
“This building was pretty darn unique 30-odd years ago,” he added. Now, using ash brick has become a sustainable building practice used across the country and abroad — from eco-friendly urban planning, to bolstering coastlines and constructing artificial reefs.
Building the boathouse
Jerry Schubel, then-dean of the school, arrived one day to Roethel’s office and he asked him, “I see all those blocks out there. They look just like they’re construction blocks. Are they strong enough to build something with?”
Roethel knew the blocks were strong because of their makeup, but did not know how they would stand the test of time. As an experiment, Schubel put forth the idea that, “[he’d] always wanted to build the boathouse on campus.” Roethel took this as a joke and laughed it off, but to Schubel, this was a major turning point in the way infrastructure could be constructed.
This led Roethel and his team to further research and development into these bricks, ensuring that they were able to meet the structural and environmental requirements to create this once imaginary boathouse.
Looking to the future, Roethel said, “we certainly have the technology today” to implement this same construction method all across Long Island.
“This [boathouse] was built in 1990. That's actually before the first waste energy plants became operational on Long Island,” Roethel said. “I had to go to a plant in Westchester County to get the ash to do this.”
“The technology that we used to process the ash, make the blocks, by today’s standard was archaic,” he added. “Today's technology is head and shoulders above anything I had available at the time. So the quality of material we can generate today is significantly better than we were able to do”
Additionally, as the boathouse was built in 1990, the technology Roethel had to use was from, at the very latest, the 1980s.
Long Island is home to four combustors — out of 10 statewide. The region handles 68% of the waste it produces through combustion, sending the remaining material — about 20% — to Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the rest goes to landfills upstate. There is some material that comes on to Long Island from New York City and small amounts from out-of-state for combustion, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Fly ash is recyclable due to its high silica content. It mixes well with water, creating a concrete like consistency that Roethel used to create ash bricks. The recycling process of fly ash removes its toxic properties, rendering it safe for use.
Bottom ash, however, remains toxic even after processing. It is heavier than fly ash, meaning it is unable to travel up the smokestacks like fly ash does. On a Virginia golf course in 2007, for example, a hill composed of coal ash leaked heavy metals into the groundwater.
“These industries are likely not going away anytime soon, but that historically, they have been set up in a way to negatively impact particular groups of people,” said Simone H. Stewart, an industrial policy specialist on the climate and energy policy team at the National Wildlife Federation.
Using ash for building has a steep hill to climb on Long Island. New York State Attorney General Leitita James’ office is considering a possible investigation into whether the Brookhaven Landfill’s vendor Covanta disposed of hazardous ash at the facility. The inquiry is separate from an ongoing whistleblower lawsuit; Covanta denies all wrongdoing.
Today, ash is supposed to be processed to remove heavy metals and unburned material, crushed into uniform particles and treated to reduce polluting when exposed to rainwater, known as leachate.
With modern technology, Roethel said ash waste can be processed, constructed into bricks, and used at both larger and more efficient scales than ever before. “There's no doubt in my mind that the technologies out there being used in other states can generate a high quality, construction grade aggregate from that material,” he said.
Unfortunately, this technology is not being utilized in New York. “Instead of hiring to ship 340,000 tons [of ash] off of Long Island, if we process it correctly we could utilize about 60% of that ash here in a sound, financially viable, environmentally acceptable manner,” he said.
According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, there are two applications under review for such methods to be used in New York.
“The department's been concerned about ash ever since combustors were built,” David Vitale, the agency’s director of the Division of Materials Management, said during a March environmental symposium at Stony Brook University. “We've always encouraged the beneficial use of ash. We've had regulations in place for 30 years for people. That's how Dr. Roethel was able to build the boathouse. We haven't had the applications until very recently.”
Thinking outside the cinder block
Stewart said finding construction uses for fly ash bricks is, “another level of that thinking that really allows us to tackle the climate crisis in a really tangible way.”
“The other really great thing about buildings is that with cement, if you're using carbon dioxide in that process or capturing or removing carbon dioxide in the curing process of making concrete, that's also a really good example of, of really long embodied carbon dioxide usage, and buildings last for a very long time.”
Ash-based innovations can be divided into marine, highway, and concrete applications.
Ash bricks can be used to create artificial reefs, four of which were built in the Long Island Sound in the late 1980s. After five years of examination, researchers found that they maintained their structural integrity, had no metal leaching, and attracted similar biological systems to the natural reefs.
Additionally, the bricks can be used for shoreline preservation and repairs. This was demonstrated in James River, Virginia, where Roethel’s team halted erosion and protected the shorelines.
The ash can be used in concrete production, as in the boathouse, but additionally has been used in asphalt production. More than 20 million tons of fly ash are used to create about 17% of India’s annual brick production, according to the World Bank.
Stewart added that buildings are, “a good example of that carbon being stored away, as well as one of the more permanent forms in the way that we've recycled it.”
In the U.S., this has been used in Alpena, Michigan, known as the global center for concrete technology. The town first began producing Portland cement in 1896. After news spread about extensive limestone deposits, the Huron Portland Cement Company made its plant there in 1908.
The plant produces over 2.4 million metric tons of cement every year, using limestone from nearby Rogers City. The plant uses waste from the Michigan Alkali Company, specifically soda ash from the manufacture of glass, to make its cement. Glass is one of the heaviest components of the municipal waste stream and is costly to process.
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced new rules establishing emissions limits on concrete used in state-funded public building and transportation projects, starting in January 2025. She said this reaffirms the state’s commitment to environmental sustainability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in government operations.
“By setting mandatory emissions limits on concrete used in state-funded projects, we're not just leading by example but creating a tangible roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the board," Hochul said in a statement.
Her administration also invested in the State College of Ceramics at Alfred University to expand recycling markets and help municipal recycling programs find new ways to recycle and reuse glass.
An additional $2.5 million has been added to the $1.7 million already available for the center work on glass production, recycling, and reuse options.
Municipal waste glass has been used in the creation of seawalls on Long Island to help prevent flooding intensified by sea-level rise.
Roethel said its crushed into a powder-like material used in cement to strengthen the concrete and prevent buckling or swelling, building resiliency during extreme weather events.
