Recycling Cans

I hope you enjoyed Monday's post on demolition because I have more of the same for today. When we left the story on Monday, the old oil tanks had been removed from the site on Walnut Street and were at the scrap yard of Rensselaer Iron and Metal, which is also on Walnut Street. I was wondering what they would do with them because there were warnings spray-painted on them saying that they had held fuel. So when I went by on Friday last week, I was a little surprised, but only a little, to see a worker with a torch cutting off the end of one of the tanks.
A while later I was by and the end was cut off.
And still later a worker was slicing the tank lengthwise to open it up. I guess that is what happens when you recycle really big cans, which is, after all, what the tanks are.
On Monday morning three of the tanks were piled in the back of the yard and this is what was left of the three cans in the first picture above.On Monday I was also back at the demolition site because I wanted to get some pictures. I arrived shortly after they had started demolition of the building. The giant claw was taking little bites from the building, and every once in a while it would get something stuck in its teeth. (Ooops--I am mixing metaphors. Sorry.)
I shot some video with my camera and edited it down to a minute and a half of destruction. It is not as good as being there, but for most people, it will have to do. (There were some people watching. It is not every day you get to see destruction on this scale.)



One of the trucks at the site was for groundwater and environmental services. I suspect that they need to test the soil and make sure it is not contaminated with oil in order to get a buyer. I know that a number of years ago SJC accepted a donation of a service station, and then learned that they should not have done that. Old service stations can have negative value. But the danger of contamination may be less with tanks that are above ground than with tanks that are in the ground.