Tipping Point LLC Will Facilitate Beneficial Use in Connecticut Area

By Judith Powers
With the establishment of the Tipping Point Resources Group LLC (TPRG) and an upland processing site that will apply the Pneumatic Flow Tube Mixing stabilization process (PFTM) a Regional Dredged Material Manufacturing Facility (RDMMF) in New Haven Connecticut will soon become a reality. 
TPRG comprises engineering scientific and regulatory practitioners from government industry consulting and academia that came together to work with the port commerce community. Marinas industrial /commercial and municipal clients want and need to move beyond the point where analysis leads to inaction with no viable outcomes – the tipping point. 
The company is a Connecticut-formed entity that recognizes that Connecticut’s three major ports – Bridgeport New Haven and New London  –  along with the area’s deep maritime industrial and recreational community are critical to the regional economy. 
“We’re launching this partnership for an industry that has very limited options for dredged material that can’t be placed in an aquatic environment. We are going trans-disciplinary in integrating dredged material management with brownfields remediation and restoration to drive beneficial use opportunities for regional economic development and revitalization” said Eric Stern one of the TPRG Partners. Stern has been advocating the establishment of regional sediment processing facilities with beneficial use applications for many years.  
 In Long Island Sound waters shared by Connecticut and New York marinas have deferred maintenance dredging due to lack of options when open water placement of dredged materials is not an option. Stern presented a paper on this topic at SedNet the European Sediment Network 10th International Conference held in Genoa Italy in June.  
The RDMMF will use existing waterfront and rail infrastructure and truck access to transport amended dredged material to regional brownfield sites. 
The PFTM system has been used in Japan for the past decade in large scale reclamation projects involving stabilized soft sediments and was successfully tested in the United States in 2015. See Rutgers Team Tests High-Capacity Sediment Mixing Technology at the Port of New York & New Jersey IDR September-October 2016.
PFTM provides several advantages over traditional stabilization techniques highlighted by its small footprint barge-mounted platform structural geotechnical integrity and the ease with which it can pump stabilized dredged material relatively long distances to the placement site. TPRG is working with industrial partners Jafec and Aomi Construction Ltd. in the RDMMF program. 
“Applying dredged material to brownfields is a means of making fallow industrial land productive. Brownfield sites are common throughout Connecticut and across the United States.  In Connecticut alone there are over 400 sites. Providing low-cost engineered fill for construction at these sites is an important step in returning these areas to productivity” Stern said. 
The RDMMF is integrated into a life-cycle Urban Sediment Management platform that blends dredged material/sediment programs with brown/greenfields as one integrated alternative to projects tracking towards a point of no viable alternative.
More information is available on the company’s website: www.tprgllc.com.