Headwaters, Inc

Headwaters Resources is the undisputed leader in supplying fly ash to the concrete industry. Derived from burning coal, fly ash is a valuable additive that makes concrete stronger, more durable and easier to work with. With nearly 20 million tons of ash products under management annually, Headwaters Resources offers concrete producers the support they need to make ash a part of their everyday production.  Fly ash sources in 30 states are linked to a nationwide network of terminals and transportation equipment - ensuring customers receive quality material when they need it. In addition to unparalleled customer service, Headwaters maintains its own extensive laboratory and engineering capabilities. Highly qualified chemists, materials scientists and engineers are on hand to ensure product quality and assist in solving challenges faced by individual customers.

Background & Capabilities

With nearly 20 million tons of coal combustion products (“CCPs”) under contract and locations nationwide, Headwaters Resources, a division of Headwaters Incorporated, is the nation’s preeminent manager and marketer of CCPs.
Headwaters fields an experienced management team that emphasizes decision-making on the regional and local levels. With corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, Headwaters offers an array of support services. For instance, materials research laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia; San Antonio, Texas; and Salt Lake City provide a full range of research and testing capabilities. Engineering groups in Atlanta and Salt Lake City also provide support to region operations. A Salt Lake City-based Transportation group negotiates high volume freight rates with railroads and trucking companies, as well as coordinates operations of the Company’s extensive transportation fleet.
ISG Resources was formed in October 1997. Since then, ISG successfully acquired and integrated many regionally-focused coal combustion product managers and marketers to form a national network with premier customer relationships. ISG was purchased by Headwaters Incorporated in 2002, and formally changed its name to Headwaters Resources, Inc. in 2004.
Company Organization
Today, Headwaters Resources employs more than 600 people, serving utility clients and end-use customers across the United States and southern Canada. Headwaters’ sister companies, Headwaters Plant Services, Headwaters Construction Materials, Eldorado Stone, and The Tapco Group, employ almost 2,900 people, totaling more than 3,000 employees in 35 states.
Corporate headquarters for the Company are located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Corporate management directly supervises research and development functions and commercialization of new technologies. This includes oversight of Headwaters research and laboratory facilities in Atlanta, Georgia. Corporate Engineering and Transportation groups in Salt Lake City provide additional support to operational regions of the Company. Also reporting directly to Corporate officers are Legal and Risk Management, Human Resources and Safety functions.
The Company’s operations are organized into three major divisions: Headwaters’ East, Central, and West Regions are responsible for bulk CCP management and marketing operations within specified geographic areas. These divisions are headquartered respectively in Michigan; Texas; and Utah. Operational regions serve local utility clients and end-use customers more efficiently.
Because of our national presence, the HRI enjoys advantages in both logistics and sales. Operating more than 29 free-standing terminals and a railcar fleet of over 1,500 cars, Headwaters is able to negotiate favorable rail rates on a national basis. The Company enjoys similar purchasing power with trucking contractors in those areas where national trucking firms compete. Headwaters also has initiated a program to form national customer relationships with large ready mixed concrete producers.
Marketing To Traditional Ash Applications
Headwaters Resources takes an assertive approach to marketing fly ash for traditional applications, such as ready mixed concrete. With national sales of ASTM C-618 quality ash approaching 6 million tons annually, Headwaters is far and away the market leader in this form of marketing.
Headwaters supports its sales program by focusing on customer desires for quality and reliability. Marketing efforts emphasize the performance value of coal combustion products, as well as the attendant environmental benefits. A comprehensive quality control system ensures that customers receive ash that conforms to their specifications, and extensive investment in transportation equipment and terminal facilities provides reliability of supply. By stressing these program attributes, Headwaters is able to build solid long-term customer relationships.

Promoting Increased CCP Use

Headwaters has taken a leadership role in developing productive working relationships with state and federal legislative and regulatory bodies to encourage favorable public policy and programs and provides active and timely responses to any challenges that arise. Legislation puts Congressional weight behind procurement guidelines, encourages agencies to find new CCP uses, and mandates a utilization study by EPA, DOE, and FHWA. (For more information about the current federal status of fly ash and related CCPs, visit Citizens for Recycling First.)
Headwaters has developed several products that increase market penetration for road bases, structural fills, industrial fillers and agricultural applications. In addition to developing new products that utilize high volumes of fly ash, Headwaters has focused on increasing the utilization of ash in building products that have traditionally been fly ash free. These include mortars and stuccos, and to some degree blocks and related masonry products.

Research Services

Material Characterization Studies. Headwaters Resources offers material characterization services to evaluate a byproduct’s potential for beneficial use. Characterization involves developing a material sampling plan, sample collection, physical testing, chemical analysis, and interpretation of results. Some of Headwaters Resources’ Material Testing and Research Facilities’ (MTRF) testing capabilities include microscopy, particle size analysis, carbon content, magnetic content, X-ray fluorescence, atomic absorption, and various wet chemistry analyses, in addition to conventional construction material testing.
Material Handling/Processing Evaluations. Headwaters Resources’ evaluations of material handling and processing requirements are conducted based on material characteristics, bench or pilot scale processing, and Headwaters Resources’ experience with similar materials.
Market Studies. Headwaters Resources’ market study team evaluates product capabilities, explores market opportunities, and recommends the most environmentally and economically sound approaches to marketing or disposal scenarios. Headwaters Resources’ experience in design and operations has led to many unique approaches to waste stream minimization by placing an emphasis on reuse and recycling.

Environmental Consulting Services

Environmental Planning and Environmental Site Assessments. Headwaters Resources’ team of environmental professionals frequently works with project planners to review proposed projects for environmental considerations early in the planning stage. Early review of environmental considerations helps to produce a project that minimizes environmental concerns and allows for realistic project scheduling.
Project Permitting and Compliance Audits. Headwaters Resources’ permitting experience includes storm water permitting, wetlands permitting, air permitting, stream alteration permitting, solid waste utilization permitting, and all aspects of landfill permitting. Headwaters Resources also performs facility compliance audits to insure that operations are in accordance with applicable laws and permits. Operations audited include stabilization plants, material handling facilities, landfills, and various utilization projects.

Engineering And Design Services

Headwaters Resources and our sister company Headwaters Plant Services have extensive experience in the design and construction of clay, PVC, and HDPE liners under various field conditions. Headwaters can also design and specify leachate collection, pumping, and storage systems. Our portfolio of civil design services includes construction of structural fills for real estate development, industrial railroad siding, hydrology/hydraulics, and stream diversion and unloading systems designs. For facility design, Headwaters can provide plans and specifications for the construction of new facilities and for expansion or retrofit of existing ones. Headwaters can also provide complete design services in the areas of foundations and soil mechanics, concrete structures and retaining walls, structural steel, masonry, and composite construction design. Our specific design experience covers systems that include dry material silos, pneumatic and dense phase transfer, baghouses, belt and screw conveyors, mixing, pelletization, screening, dewatering equipment, and related instrumentation and control systems. Headwaters can also provide engineering services for the design, procurement.

Fly ash is one of the naturally-occurring products from the coal combustion process and is a material that is nearly the same as volcanic ash. Volcanic ash concrete was used thousands of years ago to produce Roman concrete structures that exist and function today; e.g., the Pantheon, Coliseum, and ancient aqueducts. When coal is burned in today’s modern electric generating plants, combustion temperatures reach approximately 2800°F. The non-combustible minerals that naturally occur from burning coal form bottom ash and fly ash.  Bottom ash is a light-weight aggregate material that falls to the boiler bottom for collection. Fly ash is the material that is carried off with the flue gases, where it is collected and can be stored in silos for testing and beneficial use classification.

How Is Fly Ash Used?

The most common use of fly ash is as a partial replacement for portland cement used in producing concrete.  Replacement rates normally run between 20% to 30%, but can be higher.  Fly ash reacts as a pozzolan with the lime in cement as it hydrates, creating more of the durable binder that holds concrete together.  As a result, concrete made with fly ash is stronger and more durable than traditional concrete made exclusively with portland cement.

Why Use Fly Ash?

Fly ash concrete has increased strength and durability, which means it can handle greater loads, is more resilient and lasts longer. Fly ash concrete can withstand harsher service environments than straight portland cement concrete.  It is less susceptible to chemical attacks (de-icing salts, soil sulfates, etc.) and mitigates the negative impact of deleterious aggregates. This is especially true when using fly ash in infrastructure projects, such as roads, highways and bridges.   A study conducted by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association in September of 2011, stated, “The cost to build roads, runways and bridges would increase by an estimated $104.6 billion over the next 20 years if fly ash were not available.”

      Fly ash concrete is easier to work with because of its spherical shape and its ability to moderate early concrete set time. The improved flowability, reduced hydration temperatures and delayed setting time of fly ash concrete are the main factors that contribute to ease of placement of concrete.  Fly ash concrete also has lower permeability than traditional concrete, which means less water and chemicals can enter the concrete. Therefore, fly ash concrete has a longer service life and doesn’t need to be repaired or replaced as often.  Some states require the use of fly ash concrete to prevent premature deterioration. Fly ash is used to mitigate a problem called alkali silica reaction, which occurs when concrete deteriorates early due to issues with aggregate quality. This is a major issue for some states, and fly ash is the product most widely-used to combat this problem.

     Fly ash concrete costs less. Depending on what area of the country you are in, fly ash can be 20% to 60% less expensive than portland cement. In some cases, portland cement can be more than twice as expensive.  However, there have been few instances where fly ash was shipped long distances and sold for higher prices than local portland cement because the concrete durability requirements could only be met using fly ash.

     The use of fly ash has positive environmental impacts, as it conserves landfill space, reduces energy and water consumption, and helps reduce greenhouse gases. The use of fly ash displaces portland cement production, which emits approximately one ton of CO2 for every ton of cement produced; i.e. for every ton of fly ash used, CO2 emissions are reduced by one ton.  According to a National Conference of State Legislatures’ Briefing Paper entitled Recycling Fly Ash, “If all the fly ash generated each year were used in producing concrete, the reduction in CO2 emissions would be equal to eliminating 25% of the world’s vehicles.”

Is Fly Ash Safe?

Fly ash has similar chemical composition to that of portland cement, shale and volcanic ash. Similarly to these materials, fly ash contains naturally occurring trace elements that are also found in rock and soils.  These trace elements are present in parts per million (mg/kg) levels and they account in total for less than 1% of fly ash. The levels of these trace elements in coal ash are similar in concentration to background levels in naturally occurring U.S. soils.  In beneficial use applications, such as incorporating fly ash in hardened concrete, exposure would be far less than that assumed for residential soil and the potential risks would be below levels of concern.