Asphalt Recycler Looks to Move to Lowell, MA

A roof-shingle recycling business planning to move from Fitchburg, Mass., to Lowell, Mass., received verbal warnings from Fitchburg health officials concerning its operations there.

"Yeah, I'm familiar with the company," said Jeff Jerszyk, Fitchburg Health Commissioner in reference to Asphalt Reclamation Industries, which closed its Fitchburg location late last year. "I've been up there a few times."

The company, known as ARI, is scheduled to go before the Lowell Zoning Board of Appeals tonight for a special permit to operate an asphalt shingle recycling business in a 1,250-square-foot building inside the Foundry Industrial Park off the Lowell Connector.

Jerszyk said over the last year, ARI was warned at least once by the Health Department that it must do a better job of controlling wind-blown litter at its site on Cobbler Drive, or face possible fines.

Fitchburg health officials also warned ARI, which was in business for about two years before closing last December, about unlawfully accepting household demolition debris, like bathroom fixtures.

Because the company responded to the Health Department's concerns swiftly and appropriately, it wasn't fined, Jerszyk said.

"In theory, it was a pretty good operation," Jerszyk said. "I'm not sure if the problems were due to the business being start-up or what."

Andrew Zickell, president of ARI, said the company closed when the weather turned too cold for the roof shingling business. He also said he wants to move the business east, to Lowell, because there's more potential business around there.

In the recycling process, Zickell explained, about a half-dozen workers labor over a 60-foot-long conveyor belt. Truckloads of shingles are dropped off inside the building and placed on the conveyor belt while workers remove by hand mostly wood shards and aluminum sheathing, as well as odd pieces of litter "depending on how clean the contractor is."

"There's nothing scientific about this process at all," Zickell said. "It's all been done by hand."

Once shingles are separated from the other materials, they're shipped to a separate Lunenburg location where nails are removed and the shingles are ground up into little pieces to be used in road pavement.