Sopris Sun THE
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 51 • FEBRUARY 4, 2010
Quiet in the quarry Yule Marble Quarry closes with the recession By Terray Sylvester The Sopris Sun
A worker at the quarry south of Marble basks in a ray of sun. The recession has caused the quarry to halt operations, at least for the winter. Ron Bailey Photography
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or the first time since it reopened in 1990, operations at the Yule Marble Quarry just south of Marble have ceased for the winter, or at least the last few months of it. The culprit behind the closure is the usual one: a down economy that has disrupted the construction market and sapped demand for the delicately veined, cool white marble that has been cut from the quarry as far back as the late 1800s. Citing the added expenses of wintertime operations, Polycor Stone Corp., which currently owns the mine, officially halted operations on Jan. 29. Fifteen people have been laid off, and though the company hopes to reopen the mine in the spring, the closure is a sign of the uncertainty that has crept into what had been a steady source of employment. Polycor has operated the quarry yearround since it purchased it in 2004, but until the economy recovers, the mine may operate only on a project-by-project basis,
as demand dictates. “It’s just a temporary closure,” said Polycor Vice President Francois Darmayan. “We are hoping to be able to work in the summer and quarry the amount of stone we need. Maybe by the summer, if we are lucky enough and the economy is better, we can keep the quarry open.” This isn’t the first time the quarry has closed. It shut down completely between 1941 and 1990, then passed through a handful of owners before being purchased by Polycor. But for now, supply has outpaced demand, explained Kimberley Perrin, who worked as a production assistant at the mine. So Polycor won’t be spending the added money required to operate in the winter. In the cold months, the company must heat the active portion of the mine to at least 34 degrees Fahrenheit, she said. That heat comes at a significant cost: the price of about 3,000 gallons of propane per month.
“That’s just a huge expense,” said Perrin, who has worked at the quarry for eight years. “If you can imagine heating a rock cavern that is 300 by 300 by 300 feet…” The company also must keep the road to the quarry clear of snowfall and avalanches. Quarry employees plow the road themselves, but the company hires a contractor to clear slides, which can easily take a week, entailing added expenses. Until now the demand for the marble from Marble has made the quarry something of an anomaly, at least in comparison to Polycor’s other mines. The Quebec-based business owns about 30 granite, marble and limestone quarries. Most are in Canada, the rest are in the United States. All but one of them open and close in response to demand. “Most them are open upon need. So they are just open when we have projects,” Darmayan said. “Marble was one of the only ones open year-round. It is a beauti-
ful stone – the most beautiful marble in the whole world – which is how we could survive until now with an expensive quarry at 10,000 feet.” But things have changed. Perrin said that the North American marble market has “suffered hugely” with the economic downturn. Some of the quarry’s major customers are stone distributors in the U.S. and Europe, and their pool of customers has shrunk, particularly in the U.S. “Their sales have dried up and, literally, they had no way to pay their invoices to Polycor,” Perrin said. “We’re looking at having product out there and money not coming back in quickly enough.” Though the quarry’s marble has been used for major projects such as, historically, the Lincoln Memorial and, more recently, a skyscraper in the United Arab Emirates, much of the stone these days is used for more mundane items – kitchen MINERS page 12
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