Ash Grove delays layoffs for a week

After working 38 years at Ash Grove, Nathan Suitter, 61, returns every weekday afternoon to the plant, which is a Huntington school bus stop, to pick up his 13-year-old grandson. Suitter said he’s not worried about mercury emissions from the plant. (Baker City Herald/Ed Merriman)

The company plans to lay off 67 of the Durkee plant’s 114 workers due to the recession and sluggish demand for cement.

However, due to a recent surge in sales spurred by road and bridge work paid for through the federal stimulus package, Durkee plant manager Terry Kerby said layoffs were pushed back a week.

Typical hourly wage at the plant ranges from $17 to $22.

“Since we originally announced these layoffs a couple months ago, we’ve gotten a few more sales, so we delayed the layoffs as long as we could,” Kerby said.

He said cement production at the Durkee plant will continue at the normal three shifts per day through Saturday.

“The final shift goes to work Saturday at 11 p.m. and gets off at 7 a.m. Sunday,” Kerby said.

That will mark the final day of work, at least until mid-February, for 67 workers.

“There will be no cement production going on during the layoff period, but we don’t want to give the impression we will be out of product,” Kerby said. “We still have cement product and we will still have a skeleton crew shipping cement, clinker material and sugar rock used to refine sugar beets in Idaho and points east.

“Inside the plant, the reaction to the layoffs has been one of acceptance,” said Jacqueline Clark, Ash Grove corporate director of communications. “They understand what the economic conditions are, and they hope the economy improves so the can get back to work soon.”

Ash Grove Cement has its headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.

Clark said the mood among workers is less accepting, however, when it comes to stricter mercury limits scheduled to be announced by EPA in June that could require a 99 percent reduction in mercury emissions from the Durkee plant.

This despite Ash Grove voluntarily spending $20 million to install this spring a filtration system that will remove 75 percent to 85 percent of the airborne mercury released from the plant.

The EPA does not now limit mercury emissions from cement plants. Ash Grove’s Durkee factory releases more airborne mercury than any other cement factory in the nation.

If the EPA rules to be adopted in June do not include an exemption, known as a sub-category, for the Durkee plant and other cement producers that use limestone that has a high mercury content, and if  filtration technology doesn’t advance enough for those factories to meet the 99 percent threshold within three years, then Clark said the Durkee plant, another Ash Grove plant in California and others might have to close.

Given the tremendous community and political support shown for such an exemption, Clark said she is optimistic about the prospects for getting those changes approved and keeping Durkee plant operating.

In Durkee and Huntington, the towns closest to the Ash Grove plant, past and present employees and their families and other area residents, business owners, city and school officials say there’s no evidence that mercury from the factory has caused any health problems locally.

Nathan Suitter, 61, sits in his pickup in front of the Durkee plant every weekday afternoon to pick up his 13-year-old grandson at a Huntington school bus stop.

Suitter said he worked for Ash Grove 38 years, from 1970 to 2008. Because he found the company very safety-conscious then, he’s confident the plant poses no risk to him or his grandson. 

In addition to working as a laborer and heavy equipment operator at the plant, Suitter said he and his parents and grandparents lived on a ranch next to the plant for decades.

In five generations, counting his children and grandchildren, Suitter said no one had health problems that they or their doctors attributed to mercury emissions from the Durkee plant.

“Ash Grove was a good employer and a good neighbor,” Suitter said.

Local residents said they’re much more worried about the economic and social effects if the Durkee plant closes.

 At the Hungry Red Neck Cafe — the only restaurant left in Durkee, population 167 — owner Bo Lettunich said his businesses is off 30 percent since Ash Grove announced layoff plans in September.

“It’s getting so these environmental regulators won’t let us produce anything anymore,” said Dale Smull, who ranches north of Durkee.

“They’ve regulated the timber industry out of business, they’ve shut down most of the mining, and farmers and ranchers are going broke because they can’t hardly sell anything anymore, due to all the regulations and trade restrictions,” Smull said. “We’re not going to be the richest nation anymore because they don’t let us produce nothing.”

In Baker City, Mayor Dennis Dorrah said city and county government leaders and community groups have banded together in support of Ash Grove’s request for an exemption to the EPA’s proposed mercury limits.

“The City Council has written letters, the Economic Development Committee and the County Commissioners have written letters, and most of us have personally written letters supporting Ash Grove,” Dorrah said. “To me, it would be a terrible blow to our economy if Ash Grove shut down. We are working hard trying to create jobs, and losing the area’s biggest (private-sector) employer would be going in the wrong direction.”

Dorrah doesn’t think Ash Grove should, in effect, be punished even though the company has agreed to cut mercury emissions by nearly as much as the EPA is proposing to require.

“It’s not like they are sitting on their hands waiting for the EPA to change the rules,” Dorrah said. “They are spending a tremendous amount of money to reduce the emissions as low as new technology allows.

“At some point, this assault on utilization of our natural resources has got to stop. It makes no sense to shut our plant down and make the local economic situation worse, and then start importing cement from China,” Dorrah said. “I’m not just talking about mining. I’m talking about utilization of our forest resources and grazing on public lands.”

Ash Grove officials said they appreciate the backing from local residents.

“The support of the community this year has been overwhelming,” Clark said, adding that most of the area’s city and county elected bodies and many officials, including Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day and Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, have sent letters to EPA expressing support for an exemption to the EPA mercury limits.

“We also have to give a shout out to Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and Representatives Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader for writing letters and working at the federal level to get EPA to approve the sub-category,” Clark said.

Ash Grove workers who got a five-day reprieve from Monday’s planned layoffs, as well as those remaining on the job, raved about the company.

“I’m the warehouse supervisor. I have been there a little over seven years. I think the company is great to work for,” said Chuck Staten, who lives in Baker City and left a career with an auto parts company to work at the Ash Grove plant, located about 28 miles south of Baker City along Interstate 84.

“For a large corporation, I think they treat their employees especially well. They do everything in their power to keep a good, safe, environmentally friendly operation going,” Staten said.

“We have a joint safety committee that meets monthly and goes over ideas to improve safety. The company has been very responsive to the suggestions raised at those meetings,” he said.

Chuck Buchanan, who lives on a ranch just north of Durkee, has worked at the Ash Grove plant for 25 years.

He started as a laborer and worked his way up. For the past 12 years he’s worked in the lab and quality control room.

“I completely believe in environmental stewardship, but I completely believe in being reasonable too,” Buchanan said.

In addition to his job at Ash Grove, Buchanan raises cattle, and he said just as he strives to raise cattle in an environmentally sustainable way, he believes Ash Grove officials strive to operate the Durkee plant in the most environmentally responsible way possible.

Mark Ferns, regional geologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries office in Baker City, said there’s so much naturally occurring mercury and mercury left over from the old-time gold mining days present in plants, trees and water bodies around Baker County that “there’s no consensus on exactly what the source of mercury is.”

He said ancient volcanic activity, as well as past and present mining and geothermal activity, also contribute to the prevalence of mercury in the region.

“The same sort of heat system that gives us Sam-O Springs and Hot Lake have an ability to move mercury around,” Ferns said.

Kerby said the mercury emitted from the Durkee plant disperses in the atmosphere to the point the company’s research shows it’s unlikely to have any harmful human effects.

So far, Kerby said he has never seen any indications of mercury-related health effects to any Ash Grove employees.

Neither state nor federal agencies have done any human testing to try to determine any potential effects of mercury released from the Ash Grove plant.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Next week the Baker City Herald reports on sources of area mercury contamination, state and federal regulatory issues, as well as mercury-related health information.