The Sunday, February 12 News-Herald included a wire-service report about the Seneca County (Tiffin), Ohio County Engineer’s purchase of brick and stone from the county’s recently demolished 127-year-old courthouse.

Under ordinary circumstances, the company hired for the demolition work would pay to deposit the debris into a landfill. But before demolition began, Seneca County Commissioner David Sauber suggested that County Engineer Mark Zimmerman look into purchasing the debris.

Zimmerman found that doing so would save the county considerable expense. The materials from the demolition would cost the county $3.60/ton, but that would offset the need to purchase and haul stone from a quarry, at about $20/ton — a substantial savings to Seneca County’s taxpayers.

The demolition company trucked the 6,500 tons of debris from downtown Tiffin to the County Engineer’s garage, where the demolition company will crush it into stone for driveway applications and fine gravel for use in roadside berms.

More information about the courthouse demolition (and the attendant controversy over its historic status) is available here.