Present’s bright, future still murky for Ash Grove

Ash Grove Cement plant manager Terry Kerby has been able to put employees back to work while construction continues on the $20 million mercury recovery system, at left in photo. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

McLean, who works in shipping and receiving at Ash Grove, said that in his 20 years with the company the layoff of 67 workers for nearly two months this winter was a first.

He hopes it’s also the last.

“It was kind of scary at first, but I kind of liked having a couple weeks off,” McLean said. “But after a while I was ready to go back to work. I was off eight weeks. I was used to getting up between 5 and 5:30 and going to work the 7-to-3 shift.

“It’s one thing getting laid off for a month or two because of the economy and slow cement sales, but if they shut down permanently over a new EPA mercury rule, I will have to look for a new job,” McLean said. “We will have to move because there’s nothing else to do around Huntington.”

“As far as the mercury emissions, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” McLean said. “I’ve been here 20 years, and I know a lot of retired guys in their 80s who worked here, and they’re OK.”

“I don’t want to ruin the planet, but we can’t do away with what few good jobs we have left.”

McLean and Bill Chandler of Baker City were among a group of more than 65 Ash Grove workers who ate pizza Thursday while listening to company officials describe an optimistic outlook for the future of their jobs at the Durkee plant.

“It’s a good company. My brothers have worked here for years, and when I got the chance I chose to take the job because I wanted to stop traveling and be home at night,” Chandler said. “It’s a chance to make a respectable wage (around $26 to $28 per hour for most of the tradesmen like equipment operators, electricians and millwrights), and I can stay here until I retire.”

Durkee plant manager Terry Kerby described the progress Ash Grove has made on installing a $20 million powder activated carbon mercury filtration and recovery system during Tuesday’s Baker City Council meeting.

During the Council meeting Kerby thanked the four councilors in attendance and other elected officials and members of the community for writing to the EPA in support of a subcategory in the agency’s mercury limits — due to be announced in June — to allow plants like the one in Durkee to continue processing limestone with higher levels of naturally occurring mercury, as long as the company meets its agreement with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to reduce mercury emissions by at least 75 percent with the mercury recovery system currently under construction.

“This will be the first cement plant in the country with this kind of powder activated carbon mercury recovery system,” said Mike Hrizuk, vice president of manufacturing for the Western Division of Ash Grove Cement.

In his report to the City Council on Tuesday, Kerby said once that mercury recovery  system is completed in July, the agreement with DEQ gives Ash Grove 18 months to complete fine tuning, but the plant’s future could be in jeopardy if the system fails at the end of that period to reduce mercury emissions by at least 75 percent.

That’s a separate, but related, issue from the EPA mercury limits to be announced in June. Kerby said the current draft of the EPA’s proposed rule would require cement plants to cut mercury emissions by 90 percent.

That’s not possible at the Durkee plant given available technology, Kerby said.

Now, neither the federal nor the state government limits mercury emissions from existing cement plants.

“I am worried about the environment like everybody else, but I am very concerned that this mercury thing has gotten way out of hand,” Chandler said. “If this EPA rule goes through as proposed, it is going to affect everyone — not just the 114 people who will lose their jobs at Ash Grove, but everyone in Baker County.”

Kerby said it would actually be about two years before the EPA’s mercury limits take full effect.

To put emissions in perspective, Kerby said the roughly two tons of airborne mercury emitted annually from the Durkee plant would, when cooled to a liquid form, fit in 30-gallon trash can.

“Mercury is very dense. It doesn’t take much to make up a ton,” Kerby said.

Once the $20 million system is operating, that volume will be reduced by at least 75 percent, leaving a little more than seven gallons released into the atmosphere over the course of a year.

Chandler said it doesn’t make sense to shut down Ash Grove when doing so would likely shift some cement production to China, which is much less stringent than the U.S. government in enforcing environmental laws.

“Everyone who works at Ash Grove is concerned about that. If we can’t produce cement here, that’s not going to stop the people in Portland and the other cities from building concrete offices, buildings, bridges and freeways,” Chandler said. “They’re going to get the cement someplace, and if we aren’t making it here, they’ll bring it in from foreign countries.”

State Sen. Ted Ferrioli, the John Day Republican who represents Baker County, contends that environmental regulations have already decimated bulwarks of Oregon’s economy such as logging, coastal fishing and mining, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs over the past 20 years.

Now is not the time to shut down another major employer, Ferrioli said.

“It may be real popular with people running this state to bash basic industries, but wrapping yourself in the freak flag of environmentalism and gutting industries is real harmful to rural Oregon,” he said.

“In this case we have a company who is agreeable to do what is necessary, yet the urban politicians are willing to sacrifice rural jobs to have a clean environmental voting record,” Ferrioli said.

Shutting down American cement plants and importing cement from China and other countries would add to the global pollution, rather than decrease it, he contends.

Besides the lax environmental laws in other countries, he pointed out that foreign cement would have to be moved across oceans by petroleum-burning freighters.

Mercury reduction system

Hrizuk said crews from Phoenix Industries have been working 10-hour days, 5 days a week since last fall installing the mercury recovery equipment.

They’ll work six days a week if necessary to meet the July deadline that Ash Grove agreed to in a deal with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality two years ago.

Kerby said a series of ducts will carry gases from the cement plant to a large bag house, where the mercury is captured by powder activated carbon filters. Next the mercury will flow into an electric furnace where it is heated to 800 degrees, which puts the mercury back into a gaseous state.

The gaseous mercury moves into a cooling chamber where it will be converted into liquid that is captured in a heat exchanger/condenser, which looks like a giant thermometer. That device will hold at least three months of recovered mercury.

The mercury will be drained into a rectangular metal shipping container measuring about 16 inches square and 30 inches long and sold for use in electronic devices and other products, Kerby said.

He pointed out that the mercury recovered from the cement plant’s emissions are a naturally occurring form of mercury, which is not the hazardous form of methyl mercury that poses the greatest health threat.

“We are pretty good at making cement, but we have never done this before, so we are having to learn as we go,” Kerby said.

Hrizuk said that from a financial standpoint, with the cement market sluggish due to the recession, this is not the best time for Ash Grove to be investing $20 million.

He said nationwide demand for cement has dropped from a high of around 133 million tons a year in 2006 and 2007 to about 74 million tons in 2009, and demand isn’t expected to increase until the third or fourth quarter of this year, when demand is expected to rise by about 5 percent.

So far, Hrizuk said the cement industry hasn’t seen much help from federal stimulus funds because only about 4 percent of the money that was supposed to be allocated to shovel-ready bridge, road and other building projects has actually been spent.