Burlington, Mass., Nov. 5, 2024 — Haley & Aldrich has earned a 2024-25 American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Arizona Engineering Excellence Grand Award for a major airport cleanup in Kingman, Arizona. This award recognizes Arizona-based projects that demonstrate exceptional innovation, complexity, achievement, and value.
The Haley & Aldrich group that won led an environmental remediation and construction team that provided design-build remediation services to address a decades-old environmental hazard at the Kingman Municipal Airport in Arizona.
During the late 1940s, thousands of surplus World War II aircraft were recycled at the airport for their aluminum content. Waste from smelting the aluminum, called aluminum dross, was buried under an apron in the early 2000s. The region’s heavy summer rains infiltrated the asphalt cap, mixed with the buried aluminum dross, and generated heat and toxic and explosive gases, which caused damage to the apron and disrupted airport operations.
Between 2017 and 2019, Haley & Aldrich began conducting its investigation of the area where the dross had been buried and determining the volume of material to be excavated. By 2024, Haley & Aldrich had safely excavated over 96,000 tons of hazardous waste and transported it for off-site disposal via rail, which minimized noise and air pollution compared to trucking. The team then backfilled and repaved excavated areas, restoring airport operations and completing the work under budget and ahead of schedule.
“We are very proud of our work to solve this longtime environmental problem for the city of Kingman and its residents,” said Pejman Eshraghi, who led the Haley & Aldrich team. “This project marks the beginning of a bright future for the airport.”
Along with Pejman, Haley & Aldrich’s Kendra Ford and Todd Blizzard attended a ceremony in Phoenix on Oct. 18 to accept the ACEC award. Kingman City Attorney Carl Cooper and representatives from project partners Gust Rosenfeld, Clean Harbors, and C&S Engineers also attended.
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