A Letter from ARRA President, Jason Wielinski:

Dear ARRA Members,

The Asphalt Recycling and Reclamation Association (ARRA) continues to grow and provide value to our members and our industry partners from the dedicated efforts of all our members, committees, the Board of Directors and the team at CM services. Thank you everyone for volunteering time and resources to promote our association. We engaged in several significant and critical projects in 2024. We all should be excited as a few of these are coming to completion.

Thank you to all ARRA members who provided data for our Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) project. The LCA report, which was planned to be completed by the end of the year, is the first step for us in the sustainability environment. I am now expecting the final report to be available to all in early 2025. We all acknowledge this was a heavy lift with a steep learning curve and greatly appreciate everyone’s support, feedback and involvement. At our Board meeting in October, we decided to begin setting up the Product Category Rule, which will require us to find a Program Operator and develop a cross-functional committee including ARRA members as well as industry and agency partners. 

After years of dedicated service project support, Dr. Steve Cross informed the board of his plan for retirement in early 2024. Please take a moment to thank Steve for all he has done for all of us at ARRA. A Task Force was established to provide a critical review of the position and authored the job description for the Technical Advisor role. We evaluated multiple well-qualified candidates who would help ARRA and its members. I am hopeful we will have exciting news to share soon with membership, hopefully by the end of 2024.

Our meetings continue to be my favorite ARRA feature. Our Pavement Recycling Summit this past October in Reno was a success with over 220 registrations. The partnership with the Rocky Mountain Asphalt User Producer Group created a unique and exciting opportunity that connected us with stakeholders that normally may not attend our meeting. Our program was diverse and exciting with presentations from agencies, academia and members. Presentations are available on the Members Only section of the ARRA website and I highly encourage everyone to check them out.

The next gathering will be the Annual Meeting in Rancho Mirage, California, March 3-7, 2025. We would be delighted to see everyone there. We will have another excellent general program and activities (including golf on the Pete Dye Course!) with our partner associations AEMA and ISSA. Our planning committee has developed an informative and educational ARRA technical session scheduled for that Wednesday afternoon that will interest all members. At the ARRA Business Meeting, we are planning to share the Strategic Plan that our Board has developed and approved over the past few months. 

Our Board continues to focus on member value, technical content development and delivery, membership promotion, and marketing strategies to grow and promote the pavement recycling industry. We welcome your input, feedback, and involvement to help improve. Let’s continue to provide Responsible, Renewal, Reliable Results together.

Sincerely,
Jason Wielinski
ARRA President