Ash Grove could get extra time

Ash Grove Cement Co.’s Durkee plant is among Baker County’s larger private employers. (Baker City Herald/Ed Merriman)

The EPA’s offer to extend the deadline could allow Ash Grove Cement to continue operating its plant near Durkee, about 25 miles southeast of Baker City.

Without an extension, Ash Grove would have to comply with the limits within three to four years.

Officials from Ash Grove, which is based in Overland Park, Kan., have said, since EPA first proposed the mercury emissions limits more than a year ago, that those restrictions could force the company to close the Durkee plant because it uses limestone in the cement-making process that contains abnormally high concentrations of mercury, a known neurotoxin.

With 116 full-time workers, an annual payroll of about $9 million and yearly property tax payments to the county of almost $1 million, Ash Grove is among the county’s larger private employers and taxpayers.

The company’s property tax assessment equals more than 10 percent of the county’s annual general fund budget.

“The more time they have to come up with a permanent solution, the better,” Warner said.

Curtis Lesslie, Ash Grove’s vice president for environmental affairs, said Monday that although company officials are disappointed with the mercury rules EPA announced Monday — the company had lobbied for a special exemption, known as a subcategory, for the Durkee plant based on the mercury-rich limestone — they are pleased that the agency is considering extending the deadline.

In an Aug. 6 letter to Ash Grove, Scott C. Fulton, the EPA’s general counsel, wrote that the agency understands the “unique challenges” Ash Grove faces due to the type of limestone the company uses at the Durkee plant.

(Because it’s not economically feasible to transport the immense weight of limestone needed, cement factories generally are built near large deposits of the sedimentary rock.)

Lesslie said the Durkee limestone generally contains from 400 to 2,000 parts per billion of mercury; he said the EPA’s new limits are based on average mercury concentrations in limestone of 20 parts per billion or less.

Two cement factories — the Durkee plant and one in Tehachapi, Calif., that’s owned by Lehigh Hanson Inc. of Irving, Texas — use limestone that contains unusually high concentrations of mercury, according to EPA.

Fulton sent copies of the letter offering to extend the compliance deadline to both Ash Grove and Lehigh Hanson.

In that letter he mentions that Ash Grove has already installed equipment that removes most of the mercury before it’s released from the Durkee factory’s smokestack.

Ash Grove has voluntarily spent about $20 million over the past two years to install that equipment.

The company started testing the equipment on July 14, and Lesslie said results suggest that mercury emissions can be cut by about 90 percent.

 The Durkee plant has in the past released more than 2,000 pounds of mercury per year, making it the second-largest emitter of airborne mercury in the nation, according to EPA.

In the letter to Ash Grove and Lehigh Hanson, Fulton wrote that if the companies will commit to substantially reducing their mercury emissions — a step Ash Grove has already taken — “the Agency would be willing to explore how we might provide these kilns a compliance schedule that extends beyond the three to four years specified in the rule, and seek to lay out those commitments in an enforceable agreement.”

The letter does not say how long the extension might be.

Regardless, the extension could be vital to Ash Grove, Lesslie said, because the rule EPA announced Monday will require all cement factories to slash mercury emissions by about 98 percent.

“We will do everything possible in the next three years to meet that standard, but getting to 98 percent is pretty tough,” he said.

Lesslie said Ash Grove officials don’t yet know whether the Durkee plant can meet the 98-percent standard using only the equipment that’s in place now. The company started testing the technology on July 14, and so far a 90-percent reduction in mercury emissions seems feasible, he said. The Durkee plant has in the past released more than 2,000 pounds of mercury per year.

According to the EPA rule, Ash Grove could further reduce mercury emissions by installing “dust-shuttling” equipment. Lesslie said dust-shuttling would cost about $2 million, and that Ash Grove would have to get permits to install the equipment. He said he doesn’t know how much mercury the process would remove at the Durkee plant.

Airborne mercury can accumulate in water and in fish tissue. The metal can cause a variety of health problems in people, including damage to the brain and other parts of the central nervous system.

Andrew Whelan, a spokesman for Congressman Greg Walden, the Republican who represents Eastern Oregon, said Monday morning that although Walden is disappointed that EPA didn’t include a subcategory for the Durkee  plant due to its mercury-rich limestone, the congressman is optimistic that the agency will at least consider giving Ash Grove more time to comply with the new limits.

Whelan said Walden expects to field questions about the Ash Grove situation during his visit to Baker City this afternoon.

Robert Griggs of Baker City isn’t one of Ash Grove’s 116 employees, but he said his job as a truck driver with Gresham Transfer is among many that would likely be affected  if Ash Grove ever closes its Durkee plant.

“If Ash Grove shuts down there is going to be a ripple effect through the economy. It will affect a lot more than those 116 employees who work at the plant,” Griggs said.

“We have eight trucks in Baker, and we haul almost exclusively for Ash Grove,” he said. “I don’t work for Ash Grove, but I work out there almost every day.”

Griggs predicts that the demise of the Durkee plant would also affect a wide variety of retail businesses.

“Each one of those places is going to have to lay somebody off if that plant closes,” Griggs said. “People don’t know how much more is going to be affected.”