Jun 17, 2008 10:49 pm US/Central
Good Question: Where Do Sandbags Go After Floods?
(WCCO)
Watching the images of devastating floods in Iowa, the people are trying to hold the water off using the same tool people have used for decades: sandbags. But with millions of sandbags being deployed, what happens to the bags when the flood waters recede?
"Do they get all those volunteers back again to unstack and empty the sandbags," asked Ken Koth via e-mail. "Do they keep the bags someplace and reuse them after they are removed and emptied or do they throw them away?" he wondered.
"It depends," said Doug Neville, spokesman for Minnesota's Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
"If it's dry, the sand can be reused, the sandbags can be stored, they can be used at another time," said Neville.
In Ramsey County, Emergency Management Coordinator Bill Hughes explained that they've reused dry sand from sandbags for fill on sidewalks, bike trails and highways. According to Hughes, public works officials haul away the sandbags and then open them up to extract the sand.
"If the sandbag comes into contact with the flood water, there's a lot of nasty stuff in that water. So we need to make sure the contaminants that make people sick are disposed of," explained Neville.
According the
Web site of Iowa's Department of Natural Resources, wet sandbags can be reused.
"The Iowa Department of Natural Resources does not recommend that sand used in flood control be used in sand boxes, on beaches or in school yards," according to the Web site. "However, it would be acceptable to reuse the sand for residents to spread on a backyard flower garden or use in some other limited access area."
A spokesperson for Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency explained that in most cases in Minnesota, wet sand and wet sandbags go to a landfill, because it's too expensive to test the sand to see what sort of contamination is in the floodwaters and therefore in the sand.
Interestingly, many of the sandbags being used in the Iowa flood zone come from a company based in Minneapolis.
"Had we not had the inventory of sandbags it would have been a catastrophe beyond what you did see," said Irwin Jacobs, CEO of Jacobs Trading Company.
Jacobs got his start in business following in his father's footsteps at Northwest Bag Co. in Minneapolis, selling burlap bags. He's continued that tradition by keeping an incredibly large amount of sandbags in a warehouse outside the Twin Cities.
"We have always stockpiled sandbags to a degree that no else in the industry ever did because the price always went up when they [governments in flooded areas] needed them," explained Jacobs.
He said, so far, he's delivered 40 to 50 truckloads of empty polypropylene bags to the Army Corps of Engineers in the flood zone and along the Mississippi River.
"They were ordering 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 5 million and we never said no. So they were pretty pleased," according to Jacobs.
Right now, because of the incredible demand, Jacobs said there is price gouging going on. He said one of his competitors called him offering to buy bags at 10 cents more than he charges the Army Corps of Engineers.
Some companies are charging 45 cents a bag. Jacobs said he's charging between 20 cents and 26 cents a bag. But if he's charging an average of 25 cents a bag, he's making $3 million less than he could if he charged 45 cents ($3.75 million as compared to $6.75 million for the 15 million bags in his warehouse).
"I guarantee you we could have got 30 to 40 percent more, but there's no way. We're satisfied, we don't have to do that," explained Jacobs.
He said his company is large enough it can afford to keep a large inventory of sandbags on hand, waiting for the time they're needed. And it's such a relatively small part of his business so he doesn't need to gouge the customer to make a huge profit.
"We're not giving them away without a profit, but it's a legitimate profit," he said.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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