Burlington Free Press TOP NEWS    Monday, December 23, 2002

Omya symbolizes Vermont's fight over jobs, the environment

By Matt Sutkoski
Free Press Staff Writer

PITTSFORD -- The view from U.S. 7 south of Brandon is quintessential Vermont. From a ridge, motorists see a river valley of croplands, meadows and riverbank willows.

In the distance are rolling mountains, lush green in the summer, white wilderness in the winter. The rising land between the Otter Creek lowlands and hills to the west is speckled with a few farmhouses, some silos and a glimpse of a metal building emitting puffs of steam.

That building, though barely noticeable to passers-by on U.S. 7, looms large in the landscape of the state's ongoing, sometimes nasty dialogue of balancing jobs, preserving the environment and defining Vermont.

The stuff produced beneath that little puff of steam in southwest Vermont ends up in your toothpaste, your office paper, the paint on your walls, your breakfast cereal -- all courtesy of a multinational corporation called OMYA Industries Inc., with its United States base in Proctor.

The product is calcium carbonate, which originates from the rich veins of marble under those gorgeous hills from Danby to Middlebury. The mineral ends up in dozens of consumer products worldwide.
On the hills and neighborhoods atop that vein, people debate, sometimes bitterly, OMYA's operation.
Getting at the marble requires digging gashes into the ground. Then trucks laden with marble rumble through otherwise quiet towns to reach the processing plant. Some neighbors wonder if byproducts of the calcium carbonate manufacturing are safe, as OMYA says it is.

The operation also provides hundreds of people with work. Tax revenues stream into local coffers.

The questions OMYA inspires touch on most of the environmental and economic challenges facing Vermont:

Where is the balance between creating jobs and harming the environment? How should the state balance improving roads to encourage commerce with maintaining a rural environment?

Those dealing with OMYA, particularly residents in and around the little town of Danby, are discovering that the answers to those questions are elusive. OMYA has proposed mining marble from picturesque Dutch Hill. The company has not yet submitted any formal proposals for the mine, but already, debate over the idea has hardened into uncharacteristic acrimony.

Neighbors have stopped speaking to each other. Some selectboard meetings have turned into ordeals of sniping, insults, raised voices and stony silences. The environmental debate has turned personal.

Jobs and scenery

Dutch Hill is one of those modest but photogenic Vermont hills seemingly designed to take a tourist's breath away. Photos of the hill were part of at least one Vermont Tourism and Marketing brochure, and on Gov. Howard Dean's Web site for a time.

Nobody has detailed what would happen to Dutch Hill if OMYA started mining there. But residents in and around Danby fear the company will open a giant gash across the face of the small mountain, forever ruining it.

OMYA says the marble beneath Dutch Hill is crucial to keep up with growing demand for calcium carbonate. The marble is unusually pure and white, company officials say, just what OMYA needs. Danby needs the jobs. Vermont needs the jobs, the company's supporters say.

"We have to make a living and in order to make a living you have to have industry of some sort. There's more to it than just being a tourist state," said Dennis Demers, president of Shelburne Limestone Inc. The company extracts marble for OMYA.

Another viewpoint comes from Marshall Squire, who lives among the family farms and woodsy hills of Tinmouth, near Danby. "Maybe some things have a higher value than money. I'm poor. But I look out the window and that's the wealth I can't get in a paycheck," he said.

OMYA's opponents point to the potential Dutch Hill quarry. They bring up the truck traffic that rumbles down U.S. 7 to the OMYA plant in Florence. Residents who live near the Florence plant are objecting to a plan to dump tailings into a quarry and let the impurities from the calcium carbonate pile up above ground level. The tailing question was the subject of an Act 250 land use hearing Wednesday. A decision is pending. Act 250 is Vermont's development control law.

Annette Smith's Danby home has become a clearinghouse of OMYA fact, figures and the misdeeds she says the company is guilty of. She's in touch with activists worldwide and never passes up a chance to spread the word. Her Web site offers pages and pages of information about OMYA and its global activities.

In June, Smith convened a meeting at the Tinmouth Community Center for residents to talk about OMYA. About 300 people crammed into the building, a crowd almost exclusively opposed to OMYA.
The meeting lasted well into the night and featured activists from France and Canada who opposed other OMYA quarries.

The activists from France told of ruined scenery, ruined roads. They warned Vermonters to stave off OMYA's efforts. "Preserve this beautiful valley from the ogre OMYA," said Renaud Chastagnol, a deputy mayor of Vingrau, France, where OMYA has a controversial quarry.

OMYA President Jim Reddy stayed away from that meeting. But he'll tell anyone who listens that he and his company are environmentalists. Moreover, many Vermonters support the company.

OMYA is conducting groundwater and land studies around Dutch Hill in anticipation of filing for state land use permits. Reddy said he does not know when applications will become ready for regulators.

Reddy has heard all the worries over roads and scenery in and around Danby. "We are very well aware of the conditions of Act 250, one of which happens to be aesthetics," he said.

He makes a larger point. Demand for OMYA's calcium carbonate is spurred in part by customers' desire to protect the environment, and OMYA wants to help.

Reddy offers an example: Office paper now consists partly of calcium carbonate, meaning manufacturers cut down fewer forest trees to make paper.

Acid wash systems to make the paper white are no longer necessary since calcium carbonate is so white to begin with.

"Millions of trees don't have to be cut. On top of that, to be able to put calcium carbonate in paper, the process changed from an acid-based system to a neutral-base system. It saves forest and saves environmental impacts," Reddy said.

In the last couple of years, OMYA set up a booth at the Vermont State Fair in Rutland. Reddy said fairgoers were most surprised to learn they regularly eat ground up marble in their antacids or breakfast cereal. "When you're chewing gum, you're chewing Vermont marble," he said.

The next thing people were surprised about was the number of people OMYA employs.

Economy

Reddy said OMYA has 300 Vermont employees, though Smith disputes that number. About 20 employees of Shelburne Limestone work out of the Middlebury quarry for OMYA. Truck drivers for L.F. Carter haul marble each day from Middlebury to Florence. Reddy says OMYA is Vermont Railway's largest customer.

The jobs are particularly precious in Rutland County, where manufacturing is lagging. Vermont Department of Employment and Training data shows that manufacturing jobs in Rutland declined by 150 to 4,200 in the year ending in October. Another company, Qualitad, announced earlier this month it was closing in Rutland, taking 32 jobs.

In Vermont overall, about 47,600 manufacturing jobs existed in 1997, dropping to about 46,100 in 2001. Some say an erosion in manufacturing jobs, often high paying ones, are a symptom of too much regulation.

The statistics show why employers like OMYA are all the more important, said David O'Brien, executive director of the Rutland Economic Development Corp.

"They're one of our better paying employers. This is a quality employer from that standpoint. The next consideration is this is their headquarters for their North American operations. This is where their human resources are. They do a lot of research and development here," O'Brien said.

The importance and costs of OMYA are visible along U.S. 7. So is the struggle to find a balance.

The bulk of OMYA's marble supply comes from a quarry tucked behind Standard Register just south of downtown Middlebury. The pit is immense, deep enough to hide a five-story building and large enough to swallow 100 football fields.

L.F. Carter trucks haul the marble to Florence, but the company is limited to 115 trips a day. The trucks, concluded the Vermont Environmental Board, disrupt the little towns like Brandon along U.S. 7, and must be controlled.

Trucking company owner Harry Carter finds the rules galling, particularly since nobody else's travel is limited on U.S. 7.

"This is a federal highway. We have the right to use it," Carter said. "But we're limited to so many trips a day.

"Why is the state of Vermont is such a big hurry to put us out of work,?" Carter asked.

OMYA has agreed to investigate putting in a rail spur for its Middlebury quarry. That would allow marble to flow down the tracks to the Florence plant, ending the company's heavy truck traffic on U.S. 7.
If the rail spur is established, almost all of Carter's business would evaporate. Carter said he doesn't know what he would do.

"We're not going to lay down and play dead. Hopefully, we will be involved in OMYA to some extent," Carter said.

In the seesaw debate over environmental protection and jobs, some people win, some people lose.

Smith's Eden

Annette Smith lives in the woods on a little farm deep on a Danby back road. The only hint of discord in this Eden is the "Omyuck" sticker on her car and the reams of environmental and OMYA documents in her cluttered home.

One unintentional job OMYA has created belongs to Smith, who leads Vermonters for a Clean Environment.

The organization advocates for a wide variety of environmental causes, but OMYA dominates.

"It's more than a full-time job just keeping up with this company," Smith said. She said she'd rather work on milk price supports, wind energy, permit reform and other environmental and farm issues.

Instead, she says she spends most of her time trying to save Dutch Hill and the countryside from what she foresees as a giant, ugly hole in the mountain's side.

Smith also predicts trucks would bang through the little back roads of Danby and surrounding towns like Tinmouth and Middletown Springs, destroying the roads and the character of the towns. Residents, Smith said, would be stuck with the substantial bill.

She questions how many, if any, jobs OMYA would create by opening a Danby quarry. What about the effects on groundwater, she asks. What about noise, dust, tourism? In short, she says the environmental damage OMYA could bring more than offsets the damage the company can do in places like Danby.

Smith complained that big companies like OMYA are free to do what they want in the face of opponents who have few resources to fight back. "We are now facing corporations and developers with millions of dollars," Smith said. "What kind of help is there for the citizens?"

The town is divided about OMYA, she acknowledges, cruising in her car down the back roads of Danby. "They're for it, they're against it," she said, pointing at houses below Dutch Hill. She blames the company for generating the hard feelings.

Another Danby resident, George McNeill, blames Smith for the town's discord.

"Annette has stirred up a lot of controversy with claims that things are going to happen and nothing is happening," McNeill said.

He suggests everyone take a deep breath. "When they put a plan on the table, that's when the people should get concerned," McNeill said. "It's a pretty little valley and I don't want to see anything happen to it, but I think I want to wait and see what the plan is."

In Tinmouth, Squier said he understands the problem but doesn't know the solution. "I know everybody else has to have a job. But let's look at how it fits the whole picture," Squier said.

Contact Matt Sutkoski at 660-1846 or msutkosk@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
at 660-1846